


We Will Meet Again

by Sirenidae



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Aleksis Kaidanovsky pre-canon head canon, Backstory, Canon Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Cherno Alpha - Freeform, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Fighting, Gen, Jaeger Pilots, Jaegers, Kaiju, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon, Rough Sex, Sasha Kaidanovsky pre-canon head canon, Sasha and Aleksis had bad parents, Sex, Sexual Tension, The Drift, True Love, head canon, long fic, overcoming childhood trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-21 21:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sirenidae/pseuds/Sirenidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes in order to live, you must accept the fact that you will one day die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the story of how Sasha and Aleksis grew up to become one of the best Jaeger pilot teams the world had ever seen and how they died together as heroes. Huge pre-canon backstory work here, I'm writing Sasha and Aleksis' lives from when they were very little to the time of their deaths in the Pacific Rim movie. While I do use a lot of my own ideas and head canons, I am trying as hard as I can to stick with the Pacific Rim universe canon by using reference materials such as the wiki, the comic, the movie novelization, snippets from the cast and crew, and the art book, Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, and Monsters. You will see some language from these sources in and out of my fic.
> 
> Also: Aleksis is the man and Sasha is the woman. After doing a lot of research and then finally hearing it from Travis Beacham himself, [viewable here](http://travisbeacham.tumblr.com/post/56742855839/the-kaidanovsky-team), these genders have been confirmed in the canon and that's what I'm sticking with.
> 
> Like I said, this is going to be a long, multi-chaptered fic so stick with me if you can! Thank you for reading!

Aleksis – Age 5

2003

 

Aleksis was following behind his mother, trailing after her with his eyes locked on the sight of her long skirt and denim jacket, concentrating on keeping up. He wanted to say: “mama slow down,” but she wouldn’t have heard his small voice over the noise of the crowd.

They were on a busy Moscow street together, going in and out of various shops, buying groceries and other amenities for the week. Every Sunday after church, Aleksis and his mother walked downtown, a tradition they had been doing, in Aleksis’ mind, all his life. In fact, his mother only started bringing her son shopping with her a little under half a year ago when he had turned five years old; after she figured out that he could carry the heavy bags and parcels of wrapped food. Five years old and already strong enough to help with her chores.

They had been walking for about twenty minutes (although to Aleksis it seemed like forever) and Aleksis was hungry. He had woken up late that morning and his mother hadn’t wanted to wait for him to make his toast before leaving for church. “You’ll have to eat later,” she had said, measuring several large capfuls of whiskey in her paper coffee cup. “You’ll be fine.”

“Oh, let him take some bread,” his father had said, blearily rubbing his eyes and stumbling out of the bedroom, the tie around his neck loosely knotted.

His mother had taken one look at her husband before sweeping out the front door. “Your tie is crooked.”

Aleksis had stared up at his father, belly already rumbling. Meeting his son’s pitiful gaze, Aleksis’ father had shrugged helplessly. “Sorry, boy. What your mother wants, we give her.”

Church was almost unbearable but Aleksis had made it through, imagining he felt full by swallowing big gulps of air to stop his belly from grumbling. Now it was well past any sort of reasonable lunchtime and he was starving. Having just been in the grocery store hadn’t helped, either. As they left the supermarket, his mother looked behind at her son who was stumbling along under the weight of the two bags he carried. “Let me take one,” she said to him, grabbing a paper bag from Aleksis’ arms and adding it to the three she was already holding. Aleksis looked relieved that he was now only in charge of one bag.

“Is it snack time?” he asked, hoping her kindness would extend to feeding him. But his mother shook her head.

“Your father is waiting for us at home to bring him food. We can’t stop or we’ll be late.” She turned and walked on. Gripping his paper bag afresh and resuming his position of walking behind his mother, Aleksis tried not to think of his complaining belly.

A bell jangled happily as his mother pushed opened the door to their last stop of the day, a small corner bodega that, according to Aleksis’ mother, had the best deal on nips in the entire city. “Milla Kaidanovsky!” the man behind the counter greeted them, watching as Milla held the door open for her son. “And little Aleksis, how are you both?”

The door shut behind them and Milla used her hip to bump her son out of her way and into a corner just inside the shop. She set the bags she was carrying on the ground next to Aleksis and pointed a finger down, commanding him to stay. Standing up, she smiled at the store clerk, holding out a hand that hovered above the top of Aleksis’ head. “Well, he’s not really little now is he?” she said with a laugh before walking over to the display of little liquor bottles.

Aleksis looked up at the man behind the counter who gave a gentle smile and a shrug. “That’s okay, big is good, big is strong,” the man winked at Aleksis who blushed and looked away shyly. Aleksis wished he could remember the man’s name but at five years old, names of store clerks weren’t the kind of things he remembered. He supposed he could at least say “thank you”. Aleksis looked back up at the clerk but was distracted from giving his thanks by something on the counter.

On one side of the counter was stacked a pyramid of round fruit. Gorgeous, colorful things all balanced on top of each other, golden skin practically gleaming in Aleksis’ hungry eyes. The clerk laughed as he watched Aleksis’ mouth drop open. “Interested in the oranges?” he grinned down at Aleksis who could only nod in return. “They were imported fresh today and I promise you, their taste cannot be beat.” The clerk handed Aleksis one of the fruit, the orange from the very top of the display.

The fruit was cool in his hands and to the touch it was softer than he had originally thought, the porous skin of the fruit almost squishy. Aleksis had never eaten an orange before in his life, but the round, plump, colored fruit looked extremely enticing. His mouth watered. “Mama?” he asked softly, eyes locked on the fruit. “May I have this o-orange?” He stumbled slightly over the new word.

His mother was busy choosing between two different brands of vodka. “I don’t care.” She looked up finally and moved to the register. “Can you ring all this up?” Thirteen glass vodka nips clinked as she set them down on the counter. She looked down at Aleksis and sighed. “And the orange, please?”

Aleksis tried not to bounce on his heels with excitement. He sniffed the skin of the fruit. Should he bite it? About to sink his teeth into the outside of the orange, his mother interrupted his progress when she collected her change and nips and moved to leave, bending to gather all the grocery bags back into her arms.

“Tell Pytor I say hello,” the store clerk said as they left. Milla said nothing but Aleksis gave a little wave over his shoulder, using the hand that clutched the orange tightly in his fist as his other hand was holding a paper bag.

As they made their way back to their apartment, Aleksis tried to figure out the orange. “Mama?” he asked finally, holding it up with a puzzled look on his face. Seeing what her son was asking, Milla laughed harshly.

“You just had to make me buy that. Although I suppose it is a nice looking orange…” She considered this for a moment then looked around. “There’s a bench, let’s sit for a moment.” Hauling their bags across a small patch of grass, Aleksis dropped his armload onto the ground in front of the public bench and wiggled himself happily onto the seat, excited to get to taste the orange and to finally eat something. His mother sat down next to him and took the orange from his hand. “You peel it,” she said, thumbnail piercing the skin of fruit and pulling it back, revealing a light yellow inside. “And then you separate it.” Aleksis watched, fascinated, as his mother revealed to him the secrets of the orange.

Nine sections of the freshly peeled fruit lay amidst its skin on the lap of Milla’s skirt. Aleksis reached for one. “Not yet!” his mother cried. Jostling for something in her pocket, she produced a nip of vodka, holding it between her knees and unscrewing the top. “Oranges are to drink with. Hold the top,” she instructed her son, handing him the metal screw cap for the nip.

Aleksis sat back with the nip top in his hand instead of his much desired slice of orange, and huffed a small sigh. His mother was reaching into one of the shopping bags from the supermarket, rifling blindly around for something at the bottom. “I know we have some cinnamon in here somewhere…yes!” Milla produced a new cinnamon shaker they had just purchased at the supermarket and ripped of the plastic seal. Licking her hand on the skin between her thumb knuckle and the base of her pointer finger, she sprinkled the cinnamon on her trail of spit. “First, lick the cinnamon,” she said, as if her five year old were to follow along with what she was doing. “Then drink the vodka,” she continued, words sounding funny to Aleksis’ ears as she talked around the cinnamon on her tongue. Milla downed the nip easily, breathing out heavily as she swallowed the alcohol. “And finally, the orange!” Milla exclaimed happily, popping a slice into her mouth and sucking on it before chewing and swallowing the fruit. She grinned down at Aleksis. “What a good afternoon treat!” Milla ate another orange slice.

“Can I have one?” Aleksis asked again.

“Not yet, it’s still my turn.”

Aleksis groaned and sat back on the bench, staring straight ahead in boredom as his mother ate more slices and did two more orange and cinnamon shots. It took her less than ten minutes. “Well Aleksis, buying the orange was a great idea,” Milla said, rousing her son from a daydream. Aleksis looked around and realized the orange was all gone.

“Mama, I wanted that orange!” he whined, tears starting to prick at his eyes.

She looked down at him and blinked slowly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you wanted it.”

“But I’m hungry!”

His mother heaved a sigh. “People go hungry all the time, Aleksis, it’s nothing new. Besides, you don’t need any more food, look how tall you are.” Aleksis burst into tears. Milla rolled her eyes and got up to throw away the orange peels in the public garbage bin next to the bench. Looking back at her son crying on the bench, Milla reached into her pocket for another nip. Drinking it in a few big gulps she wiped her mouth and threw the bottle out in the garbage on top of the orange peels. “Oh, stop crying! We’re going home, okay? My god, you’ve given me such a headache.” She grabbed his arm and hauled him as best she could in the direction of their apartment, Aleksis carrying a shopping bag and crying the whole way.

Still very hungry that night at dinner, Aleksis asked for seconds of the stew his mother had made and his request was met with a long silence. Finally, his father nodded. “Help yourself.” Aleksis got up from the table with his mother watching him over the rim of the wine glass from which she was sipping.

“Aleksis,” she said. “Stop. Turn around and look at me.”

Still holding his empty stew bowl, Aleksis turned from his progress to the kitchen and back to the table. “Yes mama?”

Instead of continuing to speak to him, his mother turned to her husband. “I don’t think seconds are a good idea. Look at him, Pytor. He’s huge!”

“Milla, a second helping of stew wouldn’t hurt,” Aleksis’ father said gently.

She scoffed. “It will if it makes him keep growing. Five years old and already 124 centimeters! It’s unheard of.” She finished the wine in her glass and poured herself another large helping, emptying the bottle and setting it back down on the table.

Aleksis’ father put a hand on his wife’s arm. “Maybe you’ve had enough, dear.”

“I know when I’ve had enough!” Milla’s words were suddenly harsh and shrill as she yanked her wine close to her chest, protective of her alcohol. Her face was contorted into an ugly snarl and Aleksis took a step back, afraid of his mother.

“No one is taking away your wine, Milla,” Pytor said with exasperation. “Let him have more stew for goodness sake. It is just food.”

“Pytor he’s growing so fast our wallets can hardly keep up! He will eat us out of house and home!” Milla was quickly loosing her patience.

“He’s only…” Aleksis’ father was cut off from finishing his sentence by a harsh slap to his: Milla had backhanded Pytor. Aleksis dropped his bowl. It clattered to the ground and a crack appeared on the side.

“Shut up!” Milla was screaming now, standing up from the table to lean over her husband and yell at him. “You don’t know anything! I’m the one who has to be around him all day! I’m the one everyone stares at on the streets! They think I’m sheltering a monster, an abomination! It’s a burden to me don't you get it? It’s a…”

Milla stopped yelling when Aleksis’ father moved his hands that had been covering his face. Blood was streaming from a gash just below Pytor's left eye. She had hit him with her diamond wedding ring. “Jesus, Milla…” Pytor said, staring at the blood on his hands.

Aleksis watched as his mother’s face changed from rage to concern in one swift moment. “My god, Pytor, I didn’t mean to hurt you like that.” She moved to cradle her husband’s head close to her chest. “I’m so, so sorry.” Wine spilled down Pytor’s back as she rocked him gently back and forth. She looked up at Aleksis, still standing frightened in the doorway to the kitchen. “Quickly! A clean towel from the kitchen, and soak it in water first.” Aleksis ran to do as he was bidden, still hearing the apologetic mutterings of his mother and the groans of his father.

Running the tap over a clean dishtowel, Aleksis let his hands get wet, the cool water over his skin felt good and it took his mind off his stomach that now felt queasy. He stalled as long as he could in the kitchen before going back into the other room. “Mama,” he said when he was by her side, holding out the rag. She traded it for her wine glass, which Aleksis carefully set down on the table. The last time he had shattered one of her wine glasses, she hadn’t spoken to him for a week. Aleksis watched as his mother straddled his father's lap in the chair, Milla working to clean Pytor’s wound.

“This is your fault, you know,” Milla said to Aleksis as she dabbed at Pytor’s cut.

“It wasn’t him,” Aleksis’ father said. “If anything, it was the wine’s fault.”

Milla sat back, looking angry again. “Oh, the wine’s fault? Then why do you give me money to buy the wine, hmm? You love it when I drink the wine because then I let you do anything you want to me and do I complain? Never.” She moved to dab at the cut again. “So next time you say it’s the wine’s fault, think twice.”

Aleksis jumped in surprise when his father grabbed his mother’s hair, right at the base of her neck, twisting her head back and away from cleaning his gash. “Complain? Woman, all you do is complain.” Pytor considered his wife there for a moment, watching her struggle under his grip. “You want me to give you something to really complain about?” Aleksis frowned as his father lunged forward with his mouth and seemed to bite down on Milla’s neck. Maybe it didn’t hurt her because she didn’t cry out in pain. Instead, when Pytor let go of her hair, she moved to kiss her husband’s mouth, the two sucking and licking at each other ferociously. Aleksis was mildly puzzled as to why this was a thing people did but he had seen them do this before so he guessed they must enjoy some part of it.

After a few more moments, Pytor stood up, carrying Milla in his arms and crossing over to the couch in the living room. He dropped his wife on the couch and stood before her, unbuckling his pants. Turning, he looked at Aleksis still watching them from near the dinner table. “Go away, boy. Go to your room and go to sleep.” Aleksis watched a bit longer as his father pulled down his pants and lay down on top of his mother. Finally, Aleksis sighed and went to his bedroom. They still hadn’t told him if he could have seconds. Lying on his bed, his stomach grumbled.

Later that night, Aleksis woke to the sound of his bed creaking and the movement of his mother sitting down next to him. “I’m sorry, Aleksis,” she said, words slurring together and breath smelling of the wine she drank at dinner. Aleksis pretended to be asleep as he always did when she came into his room. She stroked the hair on his forehead, pushing the bangs away from his head in the only loving gesture she would ever give to her son. “I am sorry I am a terrible mother.” She stayed there for several more long minutes, stroking Aleksis’ hair and sniffing her nose wetly.

Aleksis remained as still as he could manage, at once feeling overwhelming love for his mother and yet still a burning hatred for her that shouldn’t exist in anyone so young. She would never touch him like this when she was sober or even during the daytime, not when anyone could potentially see her. Milla reserved practicing her skill for mothering to about 11:45 each night, when she was completely wasted on whatever choice liquor she had drunk that day. Aleksis would have given anything for her to touch him like this when he wasn’t faking sleep. Maybe when she dropped him off at daycare or even when he was sitting on the floor playing with his toys and she was in her chair next to him reading.

His mother coughed roughly a few times before groaning and getting up quickly from Aleksis’ bed. Opening his eyes, Aleksis watched as his mother fled his room, stumbling to the bathroom and vomiting into the toilet. She hadn’t closed his bedroom door so Aleksis could hear every heaving and splashing sound as Milla threw up the contents of her stomach.

The sounds of her vomiting put him to sleep. The only lullaby he would ever know.


	2. Chapter 2

Sasha – Age 12

2003

 

Covering the entire back wall of the office was the flag of the former Soviet Union. Beneath the hanging fabric, a low bookshelf ran the length of the room holding on its shelves various military items: photographs, medals, boots, several guns, and countless bullet shells. The bold red color of the flag framed the man who sat in the cracked leather recliner before this paraphernalia, feet on an ottoman, fingers tented over a beer-belly. He was God in this room.

“Come inside, Sasha.” The man beckoned to a young girl hovering in the doorway of the office, his daughter. “Come stand before me so I may look at you.”

Sasha walked into the room slowly, respectfully, and with some trepidation. Once across the threadbare carpet, she came to a halt before his feet on the ottoman. She stole a glance up at him from underneath a bowed head, from lowered lashes: There sat her teacher, her father. There sat the only person Sasha had ever come to love during her twelve short years on this earth. He looked at her and crossed his arms. A lamp behind his head haloed his face, creating a striking, intimidating image. Sasha’s memories of this powerful iconography would fade in her mind, but only slightly, and only many, many years later. 

“Sasha, look at me fully, like a man.”

Sasha clenched the insides of her cheeks between her teeth, concentrating on the sensation of biting down to stop her inner emotions from showing on her face. Looking at him straight in the eye she could see the disappointment etched upon his features. The pain she felt inside her heart from letting him down was almost unbearable. “Papa I…”

“Did I give you permission to speak?” Sasha closed her mouth and felt her face flush red in shame. Her father huffed. “That’s better.” He watched his daughter then, studying her, noting her strong jaw that resembled his own and the way she stood, proudly, brazenly, even in the presence of his admonishment. His daughter had a bruised and bloodied face and a gash on her lower lip so big he sympathized with her pain and did not envy her. He knew how lip wounds stung. Her left eye was already swelling into what would be a quite impressive black eye; perhaps the bone itself was even bruised. He waited, giving Sasha roughly two minutes of silence just to see if she would break. When she didn’t, he almost smiled.

Sasha wondered how long he would make her wait, the longest he had ever tested her was four hours, but she didn’t think he’d do that today. She felt warmth trickle down her top lip and sniffed heavily. If she let her nose bleed on his carpet, she would never hear the end of it. Sasha chanced a glance up at him to see if he had noticed her worsening nosebleed. If he had, he was ignoring it.

“Max called,” he finally said, mentioning an old army buddy who lived by Sasha’s school. Sasha winced. “He told me everything. What have I told you about getting caught?”

Now addressed with a direct question, Sasha could answer. “I-I’m sorry Papa, I thought I had everything under control,” Sasha stammered, trying to run through what had happened during the fight in her mind. “I didn’t know that stupid boy’s parents were close by, I really thought I was in…”

“It is clear that you were not in control!” Sasha’s father roared out suddenly, startling the girl. “You were not in control and you let yourself get caught! For goodness sake, Sasha, even Max saw you.” His large hands were balled into fits, resting on the arms of his chair, ready to be slammed down to make a point. “How many times do I have to say it: ‘adults will not understand’? Do you hear me, Sasha? Repeat after me.”

“A-adults w-will…” she stammered. The dripping blood was tickling her nose and distracting her from reciting.

Down came his fists. Slamming hard onto the recliner, they resonated on the wooden frame beneath the leather covering. Sasha jumped at the noise. “Sasha!” he roared in warning. “The whole thing, from the top!”

She swallowed a mouthful of blood and raised her head, eyes unfocused in the distance as she remembered her lines. “Good and gracious is my father!” she said loudly, methodically. “He who has raised me, taught me, protected me: his unworthy daughter. I thank my gracious father every day for his love and wisdom. I thank him for setting me on this path, for guiding me so that I may follow in his footsteps. I strive for the day that I may be deserving of his great gifts. Adults will not understand what my gracious father has done for me. My mission is sacred, a bond between gracious father and unworthy daughter. May I continue to be humbled so that I may learn all that can be taught.”

Silence descended upon the room then and her father counted out another two minutes. He watched as Sasha’s nose dripped onto her shirt. Finally, he said: “Did his parents hurt you?”

Sasha sniffed. “Yes.”

“Did you hurt them back?”

Sasha chanced a grin, flashing a wicked and mischievous smile that revealed a gap; her last baby tooth had been knocked out in the fight. A fact, of which, she was very proud. And glad too, as the loose wiggling of the damn thing and almost driven her mad. “Yes.”

“Good, wipe your nose.”

Sasha wiped her nose on the back of her hand, the blood still not having stopped. Her father sighed and produced a handkerchief from one of his pockets. He patted his knees.“Come here,Not Snow,” he called her to him by her nickname, and she obeyed, climbing onto his lap. He was a big man, tall and stocky, and even bigger now in his older age. Sasha’s lanky twelve-year-old frame still fit on his legs and she wiggled easily into a comfortable position. She loved being close to her father: He smelt of cigar and onions and the outside air, and he was warm, always warm.

“He got in one big right hook before I even knew he was in the fight,” Sasha babbled as her father stroked her midnight-black hair, smoothing the strands away from her bruised face. “But then I dodged the next one because you were right Papa, people project their punches and I could see the next one coming.”

While Sasha talked, her father held the handkerchief to her nose; cradling her head in his hands and tipping it back slightly to stop the bleeding. Sasha felt the blood flow change to dripping down the back of her throat instead of out her nostrils. Her voice altered slightly, taking on a whiney, stuffed sound as her father held her nose. “And then he tried to kick me but I caught his boot and used his weight against him.” Sasha chuckled and then coughed, blood catching in her throat. “It was so funny Papa to watch such a big man squirm.”

He didn’t respond to her story of the fight out loud but his heart was bursting with pride. He shushed her so he could lift the handkerchief and examine her nose. “It is not broken but it will bruise. Too bad, for a broken nose would have taught you a very good lesson.” He looked down at his daughter, her eyes full of complete trust and unconditional love for him. He put the handkerchief back over her nose, squeezing harder. “Although I suppose the pain will be a good enough teacher.”

Sasha squirmed in discomfort. “Papa…” she whined. 

“Hush.” His voice was stern and Sasha stilled her movements at his words. “Oh, Sasha,” her father said, shaking his head at her. “Oh, little Not Snow, what am I going to do with you?” Whenever he asked this question, he never wanted an answer and she never offered one. These were the words he always used before launching into a lecture. Sasha had long ago learned them as a cue to for her to be quiet and to get ready to listen. It didn’t matter what she was doing; if she heard those words, she stopped what she was doing and gave him her full attention.

Her father cleared his throat before speaking. “What I am teaching you, what I am training you to do, is very important. It is why we box, it is why I teach you to throw knives, it is why I make you memorize battle strategy, it is why I tell you to get in fights with the boys at your school and it is why I tell you not to get caught.” He said the last with heavy intonation upon his words, trying to impress upon his daughter their importance, pinching the bridge of her nose some more, making her associate the pain with the lesson. “I am making you into a better person, into a solider for this glorious country.”

“Yes Papa,” Sasha said, her voice still muffled, speaking from behind her father’s hand that was holding the handkerchief. Tears had sprung to her eyes but she refused to shed them. Her stomach felt queasy but she swallowed the bile. This was just another test and Sasha knew she had to overcome this pain.

He shifted her weight in his arms so that she was held out in front of him slightly. He looked at her nose in the light of the lamp behind his head. “There, you have stopped bleeding. All you needed was some love, eh?”

Sasha smiled. “Yes Papa. Thank you, Papa.”

He didn’t let her go then, instead holding on a moment longer, his eyes calculating as they roamed his daughter’s face. “I am not teaching you to get beat up, Sasha. I am teaching you to win these fights. The military is brutal, unforgiving. They will not stop up your nose for you whenever you are punched. They will not be so nice to you as I am. They will see you as a fragile girl and they will try to break you.”

“Yes Papa.”

“I do this out of love, Sasha. You know that, right? It is because I love you so much that I do this. I love you because no one else will.”

“Yes Papa." 

“This path I have made for you to walk on is a gift. Do you see that medal there?” He pointed toward the bookshelf. A golden star dangling from a band of red cloth was displayed on a small plaque in the center of the top shelf with the words _Hero of the Soviet Union_ inscribed on a label above it. “That is the highest honor our country could have given me for my services during our war in Afghanistan. This great honor is what I wish someday for you.”

Ferocity stirred in Sasha’s heart. “I can do that, Papa. I can get a medal.” Her eyes drank in the sight of the little golden star.

“Sasha,” her father said, voice full of emotion. He clasped the back of her neck with a large hand, turning her gaze back to him. “If you are stalwart, if you are determined enough, you can do anything.” 

Sasha arranged her features into her most determined frown. “I will, Papa, I promise!”

He laughed, the sound coming deep from his lungs and rasping on the way out. “I have no doubt, little Not Snow _._ Of that I have no doubt.” He hugged her close and Sasha was content. Her pain in her nose was fading and the ache in her heart from disappointing her father was gone; she was his and they were one: the perfect family.

Yet, deep in a distant part of her youthful mind, Sasha knew these moments on her father’s lap were numbered. Although she couldn’t have explained it, somewhere in her subconscious was the knowledge that she was getting older, growing too old to be crawling onto the safety of her father’s lap and acting like a baby; knowledge that her time was running out.

This same part of her brain told her that he too would soon grow tired of acting the part of the doting caretaker. Sasha knew that his heart would eventually turn harder and that their roles of ‘parent’ and ‘child’ would change completely into ‘commander’ and ‘soldier’. The unknown and frightening recesses of her mind held the treacherous thoughts of the end of her childhood. So for now, she acted the babe and he acted the parent.

“Tell me the story of the day I was born,” Sasha asked him, prolonging their time together, not wanting him to let go of her yet, not just yet. “Please?”

Sasha’s father heaved a great sigh as if this was a terrible burden, but he was grinning at her, already a faraway look in his eye as he dragged up the memories. This child in his arms…he would do anything for her, and the memory of her birth was a day he fondly remembered, even if he had been hoping for a boy. “Okay, little one, you will have it your way tonight. But…I’ve forgotten! Where do I begin?” he teased her gently.

“At my name, my name!” Sasha cried out, happily playing along. 

“Ah yes, your name. Do you know why I call you ‘Not Snow’?” he asked, using the words he always used to begin the story of Sasha’s birth. She had heard it countless times before but she shook her head and answered dutifully that she didn’t know. “Then I will tell you.” Her father cradled her close, rocking her slightly as if he didn’t know he was doing it. “It was February, 1991, a dark and cold winter to be sure…” 

You were born on the day of one of the worst snowstorms I’ve ever seen, all such howling winds and angry white snow! And can you guess what else happened that night? Right before you came into this world, the power went out at the hospital. Of course with no electricity, no one could tell exactly at what time you were born to put on your birth certificate. Not one person even had a watch! The doctor and nurses were very confused as what to do.”

Sasha grinned at this part, imagining doctors running around a hospital, bumping into each other and exclaiming loudly in confusion. She rested her head on her father’s shoulder and her small hand subconsciously grabbed some loose fabric on his shirt, wrapping around the cloth and holding it like a security blanket.

“Then they argued. Some said you were born at 11:59, firmly on the 8th. Still others said that there should be no more confusion. They said that you were born at 12:01, clearly on the 9th! Well, do you know what I said then?”

“What did you say then, Papa?” 

“I said no! My daughter was born at midnight, right at the start of a new day! In the military you know we call that 0:00:00 hours.” Sasha nodded. “It is a very special time and now here was my baby, born at the beginning, so fitting for a new child. My beautiful blank slate.” He hugged Sasha close and she smiled, cradled tight against her father’s chest.

“So the doctor and nurses finally agreed with me and wrote you down for midnight on February 9th. ‘You must be a proud papa,’ one nurse told me as she walked over with you, all clean and wrapped in a little yellow blanket. ‘Here, hold your daughter,’ she told me, passing you to me. I was so nervous that I was going to drop you! You were so small and delicate and I was frozen with fear.” 

“But you didn’t drop me, did you Papa?”

Sasha’s father shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I took you over to the window, to show you the world and the most amazing thing happened. The snowstorm stopped, just like that. The winds died down and the snow stopped falling and the winter storm listened to you howl instead. That is when I knew you would make me proud.”

Sasha grinned at a feat of which she had no recollection, imagining that she could remember that day, that she could remember the first time her father held her in his arms. He tapped her lightly between her eyebrows with one forefinger. “And that is why I call you ‘Not Snow’, for you had made the storm bow to your will even as a newborn baby.”

“And my hair,” Sasha reminded him.

He chuckled. “And your hair, yes: black as night and every bit opposite as the snow.” His face became serious then as he concluded the story. “But that is not your true name, even Sasha isn’t what is on your birth certificate. I always knew I wanted children, little boys to call my own...”

“You mean girls,” Sasha interrupted.

He waved her words away. “Yes, that’s what I said. Don’t interrupt. I wanted little girls to call my own and I’ve always known what I wanted to call my first born...”

“Aleksandra,” Sasha whispered along with her father as he said her birth name.

He smiled down at her, having heard his daughter’s soft words. “But I like Sasha better, don’t you?” Sasha shrugged. Her father grinned mischievously. “You don’t care? How about Not Snow? Do you like that?” He poked her in the ribs and Sasha let out a giggle. “Do you? I can’t hear you.” Her father grabbed at her sides, tickling her, causing Sasha to wiggle and laugh. “Give up yet?” he asked, squeezing her left side.

Sasha gasped in pain, crying out as her father accidentally touched an internal injury. “Sasha I’m sorry, you should have told me!” Her father wondered how bad the injury was and held her out from him to roll up her shirt carefully. There wasn’t a bruise but there was a slight reddening of the skin. Sasha had known she was hurt there, but she hadn’t thought it was that bad. She whimpered as he hugged her back close to him. “Those dirty bastards kicked you with steel toed boots, I should have known. Who was it? Ruha’s father?” Sasha nodded against his chest. “Dirty fucking bastards,” he muttered as he continued to rock her back and forth. “Shh, quiet now, Papa’s got you. Shh…”

As the pain in her side lessened to a dull throb, Sasha let her mind wander, trying to forget her injury and concentrate on the sound of her father’s voice rumbling deep in his chest. Sasha thought it was a beautiful sound, the deep baritone of his vocal pitch always so soothing to her. She had seen mothers cradle children and coo over babies on the street, in her picture books growing up, and on the television, but she knew without a doubt she preferred having her father hold her over any woman. 

Sasha had asked him once, when she was young, who her mother was. He had been boiling noodles for their dinner and she had been about six years old. “I would have liked to know her,” she had mused out loud, not noticing her father’s tensing shoulders until he reacted. 

He had let out a sudden scream that made Sasha jump and then cower, watching as her father ripped the pot of noodles from the stove and pour it onto the kitchen floor, flinging the pot down after with a harsh crash. “You must never speak of her to me again, do you understand, Sasha? Never!” She had to jump back quickly to avoid the scalding water spreading toward her on the cheap tiles. “And look what you have done! Mentioning that woman only brings destruction and violence into this house just as she did to this family. Do you understand?” 

She had nodded, wide eyed and frightened, gasping to get her breath back to normal as tears spilled over her cheeks. When her father had seen the tears he softened, crossing the room and walking over the cooling noodles to kneel down and bring her into a hug.  “Little Not Snow, I am sorry for what you did. Now we will go hungry tonight. But you learned your lesson, didn’t you?” He held her at arms length to make sure she nodded. “Good. You must always remember that your mother is Mother Russia and that is all. I am your father and She is your Mother. I am the only parent you’ll ever need and She is the only thing you’ll ever love.”

But as she had grown, Sasha had found that to not be true. She loved her father, not this ambiguous Mother Russia he was always going on about. She would die for him, for he was Mother and he was Father and Teacher and Best Friend. To her young mind, he was her world.

In the present, her father was shifting in his chair, standing with her still in his arms. He moved slowly out of the office and down the hall to his bedroom. “Here, you sleep with me tonight and I will keep and eye on your belly wound.” Sasha nodded as he placed her down gently on his bed, propping her up on a few pillows and tucking her into the covers. Her stomach growled and she looked up at him apologetically. He chuckled. “Don’t be ashamed of an empty stomach, Sasha. Food makes us all strong.”

He left the room and Sasha could hear him puttering around in the kitchen. He normally was a good cook but tonight Sasha hoped he wouldn’t make anything too extravagant, as her stomach wasn’t feeling up to much more than toast or soup. He came back into the room holding something in his hands.

“Eat this,” he instructed, giving her a small cup of applesauce and a spoon. As Sasha ate, she watched him go about his bedroom, tidying up. Normally, picking up his dirty laundry and making sure his books and personal effects were all in their rightful places was her job, but she was thankful that he was giving her a break, she didn’t think she could have managed the chore in her condition. She swallowed a weird lump in the applesauce.

“Tomorrow you will rest, Sasha. I will call your school and say you have a cold. But the next day you will resume your training as normal, despite your injury.” Sasha nodded. “Because why…?” he prompted. 

“Because there are no excuses for failure,” she responded readily.

“Exactly right.” He threw the last of his clothes into a hamper near the door and moved to sit on a small chair near the bed, turning the seat so he faced his daughter. “You are doing wonderfully, Sasha,” he admitted to her, giving her rare praise. “I am very excited by your progress.”

“Thank you, Papa.” Sasha tried to smile but she felt odd. Her eyes were heavy and her thoughts moved like they were swimming through something thick. “Papa I don’t…”

“It’s medicine, you’ll sleep for a long time and when you wake up tomorrow you will feel much better.” 

“Oh,” was all Sasha could manage, unable to keep her eyes open anymore.

“Say ‘thank you’ to your Papa.” 

With closed eyes Sasha mustered up some energy to speak. “Thank you, Papa,” she said thickly. She felt a large hand on her forehead, stroking her hair. She heard him speak as she drifted off into the black.

“I love you because no one else will, Not Snow.” 

Sasha frowned; this time when he said “Not Snow” it had sounded more like “Not Son”. Something in that deep, treacherous part of her brain stirred. Through the fog of the drugs it whispered to her, forcing her to listen, forcing her to understand that it was time to start growing up and away from her precious father. That it was time for her to say goodbye. Not yet… she pleaded with herself. Please, not yet…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Soviet Union existed between 1922 and 1991 (coincidentally the year of Sasha's birth), and it made sense to me that her father would feel some loyalty to this state as he lived most of his life in the Soviet Union as well as fighting in the Soviet War in Afghanistan for this government. Hence why he has the red flag hanging in his office and not the Russian flag we all know today with three stripes of white, blue, and red, respectively.
> 
> In regards to Sasha's nickname "Not Snow": In Russian, the phrase is "не снег", pronounced "ne sneg". I wanted her father to call her this as sort of a backhanded insult, as the words for "not son" are "не сын", pronounced "ne syn". The two sound similar, creating a sort of play on words, for whenever her father calls Sasha "Not Snow", he is implying that he really wanted a son and thinks less of his daughter for her sex. So while a nickname is supposed to be endearing and a sign of a bond, Sasha's nickname is used to remind her everyday that she is not the son her father wanted.
> 
> It is also not one bit of a coincidence that he named her “Aleksandra” as the nickname “Sasha” (like the English version “Alex”) can be used to denote both genders.


	3. Chapter 3

Sasha – Age 12

2003

 

Sasha was supposed hate the color pink, supposed to hate all that the color represented. Her father had taught her that anything remotely frilly or flouncy was a waste of time and was not fitting for any daughter of his to like. She had accepted this fact when she was six, after asking her father to buy her a teddy bear on a keychain. They had been at a store together; shopping for a lamp to replace the one Sasha had broken while practicing somersaults in the living room. The teddy bear keychain display was placed at the check out, right at the eye-level of a child, ensuring that they would harass their parents who, tired out from shopping, would be more inclined to open their wallets for the silly toy.

When she had asked for it, tugging pitifully on the back of her father’s coat, he had glared at her. “Sasha, you disappointment me. I thought you were better than all that, better than other girls.” Sasha had bowed her head in shame. “Toys have no place in your training.” He looked down at the bear. “Besides, that color is disgusting.” Since then, Sasha had hated everything pink or anything remotely “girly”, terrified of letting her father down again: She hated it because he hated it and his opinion was all that mattered, until now.

Sasha was currently standing mesmerized in front of a glass window that showed the insides of a dance studio filled with young girls practicing ballet, filled with girls dressed head to toe in pink. They flitted about the space, seeming to float over the hardwood flooring on… Sasha frowned, squinting her eyes until she saw it: they were on their toes. These girls were dancing, not even on tiptoe, but literally on their toes. Sasha didn’t notice her reflection in the glass window, she was too absorbed by the dancers, but if she had, she would have seen her mouth handing wide open.

Sasha had never seen ballerinas before, with her father keeping such a close, censoring eye on what she read and watched and absorbed. Perhaps she had seen a billboard advertisement of a prima ballerina or heard someone at school mention it, but Sasha had never thought about the dance form at all. Even if she had wanted to muse upon the subject, her father wouldn’t have allowed it, and her internal system of guessing what her father wanted wouldn’t have allowed it either.

Today there was construction on the road she normally took walking home from school, the new route bringing her past the dance studio. As she watched the girls in pink, all the lessons her father taught her about being tough and strong and violent flew out of her mind. Sasha’s trained eye could tell that these girls weren’t helplessly dainty either, although they looked it. Sasha knew their feet must ache, dancing on their toes like that; Sasha knew that their muscled, albeit skinny, bodies were being pushed to their limits just as hers was by her father. As Sasha saw the girls leap in unison, spinning in mid-air, she was further impressed: the physical skill it took to balance and twirl one’s body on a single point was no small feat, let alone jump and land on that same small point. Something stirred in her heart and Sasha found herself wanting to be like one of those girls. Sasha hadn’t known that one could be beautiful while still being fierce, and now she needed to feel that way.

Sasha watched the dancers with a fierce gaze, absorbing all she saw. Her mind had been trained to respond impressively to stimuli of all kinds and especially when it came to memorizing physical movements. Her father expected her to learn any new series of fighting sequences immediately, and did not tolerate repeating himself much, if at all. Sasha watched the dancers, memorizing what they were doing in a matter of seconds, and she would be able to repeat the steps on command in a matter of minutes.

A loud knocking on the glass interrupted Sasha’s studying. “Hey! You girl! Get out of here!” It was the ballet teacher, rapping her knuckles on the glass and glaring down at Sasha. “What are you, a stray?” Sasha took several steps back, startled and dazed at having been brought out of her intense examination so abruptly.  “Go on!” the teacher yelled again. The noise muffled was through the glass but the message was clear.

Sasha ran, heart accelerating to a loud thumping cacophony in her ears, backpack knocking about heavily from side to side, bumping the still healing wound near her ribs. The dance steps were fading fast from her mind, like trying to remember a dream. If she didn’t get the steps into her muscle memory soon, they would be lost forever. Sasha’s head moved from left to right as she ran, searching for the perfect place to practice. About a block from her apartment, she found it: a women’s shoe store that had been closed for several years, the building abandoned and the parking lot in the back, deserted.

She shed her backpack as quickly as possible, closing her eyes and running through what she had seen at the dance studio again. She placed her heels together and forced her toes out and away from each other. Her arms she held outstretched on either side of her body. As she bent her knees into a squat, she brought her hands together and down before releasing them back up and out as she stood from the squat. Later, she would come to know this as a grand plié but for now Sasha just felt her blood pounding hotly through her body. Did she look as graceful as the ballerinas? Sasha wished she had a mirror. She repeated the movements for as long as she dared stay away from her apartment: too long and her father would start to worry as to where she was and ask her questions to which she would have no answers. Gathering her backpack and still slightly out of breath, Sasha left for home, head feeling light and a small smile on her lips.

This exaltation evaporated as she neared her apartment and reality began to set back in. Entering the building, her heart sank as the unseen oppressive cloud of her father swallowed her. This was his territory and in this place she was his completely. Climbing up the first flight of stairs, Sasha began to dread what lay before her. What if he found out? He can’t know, she thought. The door to her apartment stood before her, the familiar plaque of “1A, Building Superintendent” at one time comforting, was now no longer so. He must never know. Sasha took a breath and opened the door. 

His voice greeted her almost immediately. “Is that my little Not Snow?” her father asked from the couch in the living room as she walked through the door.

“Hello Papa,” she said carefully. 

“How was school today?”

She was suddenly scared, wondering if he would be able to read the treachery right from her mind. He was sitting in front of a small coffee table covered in papers, which he looked at through reading glasses perched upon his nose. Sasha relaxed. He wasn’t paying close attention to her. “It was fine, Papa. We are still practicing world geography.” She set her backpack down heavily at her feet in the entranceway, the bag to be ignored until the following morning. She joined her father on the couch.

“Your homework?” he asked, still not looking up from the pile of papers in front of him: manifests of the cleaning supplies and tools within their apartment building. As building super, it was one of his jobs to make sure the public supply closets on every floor were always stocked.

“Done in class.”

He looked up from checking the manifests then, alerted by the sound of her voice. “Perhaps it is time to homeschool you, Sasha. If you are as bored in school as you sound when you talk about it, maybe you need more of a challenge.” If Sasha had any friends at her school, she would have protested this proposal. Instead, she shrugged.

“If you feel that is best,” she said, feeling very weary and much older than her twelve years. In truth, she didn’t really like school; she didn’t like the baffling numbers in math or the confusing letters in her books. The term “dyslexia” would be used to label her later but for now she just sat in the back of the classroom, feeling slow and stupid but slogging through the work anyway for her father tolerated nothing less than a 4. The only subjects Sasha really liked were history, where she learned about ancient battles, and English, where she loved hearing the sound of the foreign words in her mouth. She wasn’t stupid, but her smarts weren’t made for the classroom. Her intelligence lay in her father’s training room, where she learned military tactics with razor-sharp precision and cold calculation.

Her father shuffled the papers in front of him and took off his glasses. “When have I ever not known what is best for you?” She smiled up at him. “Why were you so late today?” Sasha’s smile vanished.

When her father had taught her to lie, never thinking she would lie to him of course, his first lesson had been to keep it simple. The less words you gave to someone, the less likely they would be able to find the holes between those words. Sasha hesitated only a moment before answering. “Construction on the road.” Her father nodded at her answer and she let out a small sigh of relief.

“Go change and we can train. I’ve got a good lesson for you today,” he said, standing up from the couch and putting his papers back in a folder. “Hurry up.” Sasha moved quickly to her bedroom, shutting the door behind her and leaning against it, heart racing.

He didn’t notice, she thought. He didn’t notice, he didn’t even notice, she chanted over and over again in her mind. I lied to him and he didn’t notice. She had lied to her father before in her life, the white lies all children tell their parents, such as “yes I finished my homework” and “I can’t go to school, I have a tummy ache”, but he had quickly rid her of that habit. But this, Sasha thought, this was something new. Sasha realized with a jolt that this time she told a lie to her father, her all-knowing, all-powerful father, and had gotten away with it. She looked at herself in the mirror nailed to the wall across from where she stood and saw a flicker in her eyes. Slowly, she walked toward her reflection.

Something was different inside her now: changing, slowly changing. It was as if a hand, holding fast to a rope for so many years, had unclenched one finger. Looking at herself, Sasha watched as a slow smile spread across her lips, slightly maniacal. “He didn’t even notice,” she whispered out loud, giddy with the notion that she had done something outside her father’s rules. She turned her head right, and left, grinning all the while. Who was this new person in the mirror? 

“Sasha, hurry up!” her father barked from outside her door. She jumped, breaking eye contact with her reflection. As soon as she did, guilt flooded her mind, curling deep into her gut. She felt such exhilaration at disobeying father, but how could she? He raised her, he loved her, and she had returned the favor betraying him twofold: by lying to him and by feeling happy about that lie. The girl in the mirror was suddenly ugly to Sasha, despicable and repulsive. Hastily changing clothes, Sasha exited her room with conflict brewing in her heart. I have to push through this, she thought. I must work extra hard tonight so he doesn’t suspect anything.

“Ready?” he asked as Sasha emerged. She gave a curt not and followed him down to their training room in the basement of the apartment building, used only by Sasha and her father. They warmed up on the mats her father had purchased from an old gymnastics training house, Sasha stretching her body as her father lectured her on the history and uses of the new fighting style he was teaching her that month. “Enough stretching. Get up, we begin now.” Sasha stood and bowed respectfully to her father. He nodded his approval and began the lesson.

As her father instructed her on this and that for the next hour, watching his daughter move in a sequence of fighting stances and working her way through his choreography, he noticed something was different in her manner. He was teaching her Krav Maga and from the start she had responded to the new defensive type fighting style brilliantly. Tonight, however, was even better than usual… Sasha’s father frowned. He couldn’t find a fault with her technique and she hardly made any mistakes. It was her fire, he realized suddenly. She was moving with extraordinary power, as if she were bursting with raw energy. He had never seen her act like this before. After they finished for the night, he commented on the matter. “You have much energy tonight, Sasha. A good spirit.” Sasha wiped the sweat from her brow and frowned. Was he approving of this new person inside her?

“Thank you Papa,” she said between sips from the water bottle he handed her.

He considered Sasha as she drank deeply from the bottle. “Something new happen?”

Sasha almost choked on a mouthful of water. Coughing she answered, “No Papa, nothing.”

He stared at her a while longer before smiling and clasping her roughly where her neck met her shoulder, fingers curling around the back of her neck. “Go, Not Snow, take a shower and I’ll cook us something good to eat. You earned it.” He watched her climb the stairs out of the basement, heart swelling with pride. He hoped this new trend of fiery passion would continue in all her workouts with him. As he sprayed down the mats with disinfectant cleaner, he began to whistle. It was finally coming together, he thought. He could see in her now the soldier she would one day be.

Sasha’s life then took on a new routine as she explored this newfound freedom from her father. She began walking home from school everyday on the road that led her past the dance studio and would stop in front of the window, watching the ballerinas, memorizing their technique and routines. She practiced on her own time as best she could in the parking lot behind the empty restaurant or in her bedroom behind a locked door. It didn’t take long for her to grow bold enough to incorporate the lessons she learned from ballet into the martial art lessons she was being taught at home.

“Much better, Sasha!” her father yelled at her as she demonstrated new Taekwondo moves she had been taught the day before. Krav Maga had been mastered and her father had moved on. “Very good, very graceful.” Sasha was elated. This was what she had wanted; he had always told her she had no fluidity of motion, no feel for the moves. She had been skilled, but not perfect. She was missing some sort of coordination that even he didn’t understand well enough to teach her.

Now, however, with the secretly practiced ballet moves to guide her, Sasha was beginning to understand how to bring beauty into her hand-to-hand combat training and was excelling rapidly. By the time of her half birthday in her twelfth year, Sasha was skilled enough to take down any one of her father’s old military buddies, had they still been in peak physical condition and many years younger. And if she had been set against any highly trained martial arts specialists, she would have been able to get in several clean, solid hits.

“Excellent, Sasha,” her father was saying as she finished her choreography. “You may stop for today.” She walked over to him and he hugged her with one arm, looking down at his child and smiling. “I don’t know what has gotten into you lately but I’m glad you’re finally able to take your training to the next level.” 

“Me too, Papa,” she said, heart doing guilty flip-flops in her chest. She knew she should stop watching the dancers, but she couldn’t. It became addicting for Sasha to memorize the ballet moves and to add them to her repertoire. She needed to dance so she could do well in training and, in turn, receive praise from her father. The guilt she felt by lying to him was always wiped away when he commended her hard work, never knowing that he was at the same time approving, in Sasha’s mind, of the ballet as well.

This went on for several months, until the end of May, Sasha finishing out her 7th year of secondary school with her mind focused only on ballet and martial arts. Her grades had dipped to 3’s but her father, for once, didn’t care as his daughter was performing so well in her training. Sasha had never been happier. The only obstacle she felt was the fact that she couldn’t twirl as the dancers did. Her shoes didn’t allow for her to spin when she practiced in the abandoned parking lot, and even her socks were inadequate when she practiced on the cheap tiling of her bedroom floor. In school, they had been learning about introductory physics for the past month and by the last day of classes, the lessons on friction finally sunk in for Sasha: she needed a pair of ballet shoes.

Sasha ran out of the school faster than any other child when the teachers released them for the summer. She made her way to the dance studio with a mission: reconnaissance on ballet shoes and how to procure some. As she approached the dance studio however, Sasha knew immediately something was wrong. Where was the piano music? Where were the hovering parents? Sasha came to a halt before the window. The studio was dark and empty, abandoned. Sasha’s heart flew to her throat. Had it closed? She felt an intense feeling of despair; control was everything in her world and this strange occurrence had thrown a major wrench in her life plans. A door opened around the side of the building and Sasha turned. It was a janitor, lugging out a black plastic bag of trash. “What is happening?” Sasha demanded of the man as she walked toward him. “Why is the studio closed?” The janitor looked around, surprised someone was there.

“First day of summer break,” he answered, walking to the back of the building, still holding the trash bag. “Studio’s closed for a week’s vacation.” Sasha’s heart fell, although, she told herself sternly that she probably should have expected something like this. The janitor threw the bag into the dumpster and it split open, revealing something pink.

Sasha pointed. “What’s that?”

“The trash?” The janitor looked over his shoulder. “Oh, it’s the ballet shoes. Damn kids go through them like…” The man stopped. He had been about to say “condoms in a whore-house” but the age of the girl he was talking to registered in his brain. She was tall but he guessed she was around thirteen or twelve. “Well, you know…” He coughed and started again. “The shoes apparently wear out very quickly, some girls need new ones every month. Have a good one.” Nodding at Sasha, the janitor walked to the side door, using his keys to open it, and disappeared back inside the studio.

Sasha was standing very still. “Some girls need new ones every month.” The janitor’s words echoed through her head. Sasha had never stolen anything in her life; she had never needed to. Besides being taught that it was wrong, she had never wanted anything so badly that theft was an option. She ran to the dumpster, digging through the trash until she found a pair of shoes that fit her feet. When she did, she climbed up onto the edge of the dumpster, feet straddling a corner, shoes held close to her chest. Sasha let out a whoop of triumph, yelling with all the might her twelve-year-old voice possessed. Smiling without abandon, she leapt down from the dumpster, landing easily on her feet before sitting down, removing her own shoes and shaking off her backpack as fast as she could. The shoes were pointe shoes, and the hard leather shanks were much too broken in for any respectable ballet dancer to use but Sasha didn’t know better, and if she had, she wouldn’t have cared. She had no toe pads or toe spacers or even tights to wear with the pointe shoes, but as she slipped her feet into them, Sasha felt a feeling of such exhalation, it bordered on religious. This felt right. 

Using the side of the dumpster as a support, Sasha stood onto her toes, balancing shakily but balancing none the less. When she wobbled to a complete standing position, Sasha let go of the dumpster and froze, waiting to see if she would stay upright. When she did, Sasha let out another whoop. “I am Sasha!” she screamed out to the world. “I can do anything I want!” Giddy with joy and freedom, Sasha lifted her left leg and tried to twirl on her right toes. The asphalt in the abandoned parking lot did nothing for ballet slippers and the fabric caught on the pavement. Sasha crashed to the ground, scraping the palms of her hands, but she wasn’t upset. Her wild smile remained on her face as she stood up once more, forcing her body to learn how to balance in the shoes. She held onto the dumpster as she walked forward in a trembling line, the toes of the pointe shoes clopping slightly on the ground.

At the end of nearly an hour of her practicing walking in the shoes, Sasha lay down in the parking lot, breathing heavily from her efforts. Her toes itched and she carefully untied the pointe shoes. To her horror, her socks were spotted in red blood. Gingerly peeling her socks from her feet Sasha gave a small whimper as she saw the blisters and sores on her toes. Feeling extremely stupid, Sasha pulled her socks back on her feet and laced up her school shoes, groaning as the throbbing pain began to worsen. Concentrating on how it had felt to wear the shoes instead of how it now felt, Sasha made it back to her apartment where she immediately cloistered herself in her bedroom, curling up under her blankets on her bed, trying to nap through the aches from her feet. It was the first day of summer and she wouldn’t have training tonight. Her father was probably upstairs painting the apartment that someone had just moved out of. Eyes closing in exhaustion, Sasha’s mind sleepily made plans to bundle and wrap her toes heavily before she tried the shoes again.  

The pointe shoes were at the bottom of her backpack, but they didn’t stay there. Sasha hid them around her bedroom, changing hiding places every couple of days, just to be safe. When her father was away, visiting an army friend from his time serving in Afghanistan, dealing with tenants in the apartment building, or just out at the corner store, Sasha would quickly scramble to shut her door, take out the shoes, and practice balancing on her toes in the middle of her room. Eventually, she learned to rotate on her toes, spinning her body slowly on the point of the shoe, using her wall for support. Sometimes, late at night, she would take them out and just hold them as she lay on her bed, looking at the beautiful pink silk shoes by the light of the moon streaming through her window. This went on for several weeks, long enough for the ballet studio to open again, and for Sasha to venture back out to study the dancers, learning new moves and dance positions.

Eventually, Sasha decided to bring her shoes with her when she watched the dancers, wanting to copy their moves in the pointe shoes immediately after seeing the ballerinas do it. Packing her backpack with a snack of a peanut butter sandwich and a water bottle, Sasha flipped up a corner of her mattress for the ballet shoes. They weren’t there. Her breathing intensified. Where were the shoes? Sasha dropped to all fours, scrambling around her bedroom, searching desperately for the missing slippers. Anxiety mounted as she searched, ripping her sheets and blankets from her bed, tossing books from her bookshelf onto the floor. Where were they?

Her door opened and she froze. “Sasha,” she heard a voice say from behind her. She turned quickly and stood up, facing her father who was standing at her door. “Papa!” she exclaimed, trying to appear casual. When she saw what he was holding, she shrank in fear. “Th-those aren’t m-mine I swear,” she stammered hopelessly. He was holding the ballet shoes, the pink ribbon pinched between a thumb and forefinger. He ignored her pitiful lie of ownership.

“What,” he said in a soft voice, words dangerously calm. “Were these doing in your room?” In her mind, Sasha knew it was only a matter of time before he had found them, a matter of time for her to make a mistake, but she had hoped her ballet secret would have lasted longer than this.

“I-I’m sorry Papa, I just wanted to see… No one was using them; they were just thrown out, in the garbage. Those girls throw out shoes all the time… I just wanted…“ She tried to say something, anything to help the situation.  Leaving her babbling, he walked away, retreating into his room and shutting the door. Sasha broke down in the hallway, sinking to her knees and sobbing heavily, tears flowing fast over her cheeks. How could she have been so stupid? Her stomach was a pit of despair, her mind screaming at her, crying out in her guilt at having betrayed her father. What if he no longer loved her? He doesn’t, her mind said. Who cares? another part replied. Sasha felt sick. 

Then, his door opened, interrupting her hysterics. He was holding a hammer and nail in one hand, the pointe shoes in another. “Get dressed and go to the basement. You have two minutes.” Sasha rushed to obey, flinching as she passed him to go to her room lest he smack her, which he didn’t. He never hit her outside of their fighting in the training room and never would save for one time in her future. His brutality was of a different nature. She walked down the stairs to the basement in front of her father, looking very much as if she were going to the gallows with him as her executioner. “In the middle of the mat, go,” he said. Sasha moved to the center of the training room, turning to watch as her father held up the ballet shoes by their silk ribbons and nailed them to an exposed beam at the front of the room. The symbolism was palpable. Sasha’s cheeks burned with her shame. “I hope you are ready, Not Snow,” he said turning to face her and throwing the hammer down on the ground with a loud crash. “Because you need to learn a very important lesson.” 

For the next month, he didn’t speak to her outside of the basement at all, and even in the training room he only used his words to direct her in correcting an exercise technique or to bark orders at her for different fighting sequences. What he had her do was beyond anything she had ever done before. Usually they trained for an hour or an hour and a half, but now he pushed her to three or four hours at a time. He used exercises to torture her, challenging her body while quizzing her on military techniques, human psychology, survival skills, or anything that came to his mind. Once, she remained in a wall sit for an hour, back against the wall, legs at a right angle, her thighs burning, her core shaking, all while having to hold two 25 lbs. weights in either hand out in front of her. “In what year did Frederick the Great occupy Saxony?” he shouted at her.

“Summer, 1756,” she replied through gritted teeth.

“Conjugate the English verb ‘to dance’ in the past perfect continuous.” He glared at her.

Sasha swallowed. His choice of verb was not a coincidence. “I had been dancing,” she started in halting English. “You had been dancing; he, she, it had been dancing; we had been dancing; you had been dancing; they had been dancing.”

“How many pounds does it take to dislocate the patella?”

Sasha thought. If she got the question wrong she would have to start the hour of wall sitting all over again. “Twelve pounds?” He nodded and moved on to his next question.

This went on for some time. Sometimes it wasn’t questions, sometimes he simply screamed at her, telling her how ungrateful she was, how hard he was working for her and didn’t she see that? Shouting that he didn’t make his way through Afghanistan, to survive the Soviet war there, just to come back to raise an ungrateful daughter. When he wasn’t teaching or yelling, he would stand in the corner, arms crossed over his belly, silently watching her struggle to complete her thirtieth chin-up or her 200th sit up. 

At first she had cried through everything her father commanded she do in penance for her sin. She would follow his directions, quietly dealing with the physical and emotional pain while whimpering pitifully, unable to stop from crying. After about a week, she stopped crying outright, going through her training locked jawed but with tears streaming down her face. Soon after that, the tears stopped, her body seeming to say, “we have nothing left”, and she absorbed her punishment stoically, her mind giving up and embracing her fate.

As the days of her punishment neared a full month, he taught her Sambo, the combat style Russian martial art. He grappled with Sasha on the ground, choking her into submission until she learned how to parry his attacks. He moved on to incorporate other forms of hand-to-hand combat with this style, teaching her how to fluidly move from one discipline to the next. Finally, he collected all the techniques into a sort of no-holds-barred ultimate fighting style, sparring with her day after day, hour after hour, expecting her to survive any style of assault. It was then that Sasha neared true exhaustion, her body pushed too far. Physically, she knew it was only a matter of days before her body would collapse and give up, but her mind held fast. If she were to break, she would go down fighting.

“Stand up, Not Snow,” he spit out at her one morning. It was five a.m. and he had woken her from sleep by pouring cold water on her face and demanding she get up and get ready for a fight. Still sleepy and shocked and beyond tired, Sasha hadn’t seen his kick coming soon enough to evade the attack. She had taken his foot straight to her chest. “Get up and fight.” Sasha lay flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her. “Get up,” he said again. Sasha struggled to regain her breath. “What was that, Not Snow? Tell me what I did.”

“Karate,” she managed to gasp out, correctly identifying the style of kick her father had just used. She coughed as she struggled to her feet, rubbing her sternum.

He nodded at her from across the mat; already back into a ready stance, fists up, balancing on his toes, ready to strike. “We go again!” he cried, not waiting for her to set herself before moving to attack her. He swung: an uppercut coming from his right arm. Sasha pivoted away from the punch too quickly, already unbalanced from not being able to get into a ready stance, and felt herself falling. All of her weight was on her left foot, body momentum heading quickly toward the ground. If she hit the ground now, he would jump directly on top of her to wrestle her into a headlock and that was something she wanted to avoid.

As Sasha fell, her mind desperately grabbed at something she could do, anything. It landed upon a memory of a dance move she had practiced over a month ago, after seeing the girls at the studio do it so beautifully. She twisted her arms around her body, using the momentum to steady her fall and get back her balance, allowing her to spin on the ball of her left foot. If she had been able to see the twirl, Sasha would have thought it was quite pretty. Her body came back around to face her father and Sasha let her torso bend parallel to the ground, swinging her right leg up with tremendous force, colliding solidly with her father’s jaw. The whole incident took less than a five seconds and before Sasha could register what happened, her father was on the ground, clutching his jaw and swearing loudly.

“Fucking hell!” he roared from the ground. Sasha stood back from him and waited, wondering what had happened. “What was that?” Sasha shook her head, eyes wide and staring. “You dislocated my jaw!” Sasha’s eyebrows shot up. That’s why his words sounded strange. “When did I teach you that move?”

Sasha’s heart dropped as she realized what she did. “I-I think,” she started, faltering with nervous emotion. Stand strong, she told herself. I got in a good, fair hit. “I think that was ballet.”

Her father’s eyebrows shot up, a hand still covering the lower half of his face. “Ballet?” he repeated incredulously before snapping his jaw back into place with a loud pop. Sasha nodded. When he didn’t say anything more, she approached him carefully and extended a hand to help him up. “Ballet,” he said again, looking at her hand and then slowly up at her face.

“I’m sorry Papa, please let me help you up,” Sasha said, miserably.

He stared at his daughter, ignoring the hand she held out to him. Her eyes were sunken, rimmed with dark circles and she was skinny, much skinnier than she had ever been. Over the past month, she had dropped about seventeen lbs. and was no longer strong and muscular. Instead her body was wiry and taught, her skin a sallow grayish color. “Sasha,” he said quietly. She froze. This was the first time he had called her anything but ‘Not Snow’ in weeks. “Come here.” He held out his arms and she approached, twitchy and cautious like an animal. When she was close enough he grabbed her and held her close. “Don’t you ever, ever lie to me again, Sasha. Just look at yourself! You almost made me drive you to death.” Sasha felt his forgiveness wash over her in waves of relief. He was going to forget this transgression, give her another chance! Sasha couldn’t believe it: he loved her again. She let herself break down into tears. 

“I’m sorry, Papa,” she sobbed. “I never meant to disrespect you.”

He shushed her, holding her close as she cried, sobs trembling through her thin body. “I thought I was losing you,” he said, rocking her back and forth on the mat. “I can’t stand the thought of losing you.”

She looked up at him, wiping her nose. “I don’t want to be a ballerina, Papa. I never wanted to be a dancer. I just wanted to be graceful and strong, like you told me. I wanted you to be proud.”

“I am, Sasha, I am proud.” He hugged her again. “You shouldn’t make me push you so hard. It’s not good training. You need to rest enough and eat enough.” He looked at her. “Why did you do that to yourself?”

“I’m sorry,” was all she could say. He kissed her hard on the forehead.

“Just promise me you won’t do it again.”

Sasha nodded vigorously. “I promise, Papa. I will forget all about the dancing, I promise.”

Her father heaved a sigh. “I can’t say that it hasn’t helped you,” he said, surprising his daughter. She looked up at him, stunned. “That kick was impressive. We will continue to add this kind of grace that you’ve found in ballet into your workouts but I will teach it to you.” Sasha could hardly believe her ears. “However,” her father warned. “If I find out that you are going by the dance studio or if you practice dancing in any way outside of this room, it will be worse for you than you’ve ever experienced. Even worse than you just went through. Understand?” Sasha nodded again, wide eyed.  “Good,” he said, pushing Sasha off his lap and standing up. She followed suit, trailing after him as he walked over to where the ballet shoes were nailed to the beam. He ripped them off the nail by the ribbons and turned, handing them to Sasha who was confused. What was he doing? 

“Papa?” she questioned. He just pointed to a metal trash barrel in the corner.

“You will burn the shoes.”

“What?” she asked, horrified.

He looked down at her, face dark and cold. “You heard me. Burn the shoes. Get them out of my house and out of your mind forever.”

Stunned, Sasha walked slowly over to the barrel, reverently carrying the pointe shoes as if a pallbearer in a funeral. Stopping at the opening, she hesitated, the gaping hole of the metal trash barrel seeming to extend on and on into nothingness. “Sasha,” her father warned from behind her. “Don’t fail me now.” She flung the shoes into the barrel. There was kerosene in a container on some shelves to the left of her. Sasha moved to get it, her body walking as if in a dream, mind far away. Matches were also on the shelf, a box of them. Sasha grabbed those too. She crossed back over to the barrel, lugging the heavy container of kerosene with her, needing two hands, the box of matches held in her mouth. The flammable fluid poured easily into the metal barrel and Sasha’s nose twitched as she smelled the chemicals. “Good.” The voice of her father came from behind her as she set the kerosene container on the ground. She could feel his gaze boring into her back. Sasha lit a match, holding the blazing stick aloft and peering into the depths of the flame. She let go. The fire alighted immediately and Sasha watched as it consumed the shoes. “I’m proud of you, Not Snow,” her father said. Something inside her shifted and another finger was loosened from that rope.

“I hate you,” she whispered so quietly she wasn’t sure she said it. She wasn’t even sure if she had meant to direct her abhorrence at the burning ballet shoes, or at her father. "I hate you."


	4. Chapter 4

 

Aleksis – Age 9

2007

 

It was on a Tuesday, the fourth day into the month of March, and Aleksis was late in leaving the classroom as always, waiting until all the other children had filed out and emptied the building before making a move. He approached the desk of his teacher, holding his homework to be turned in for the day. She accepted it with a smile. “Good work today, Aleksis,” she said, complimenting him on the test she had handed back earlier. “You’re a smart kid, you know that? Very smart.”

“Thank you, Miss Gorev,” he said, giving his teacher a small smile of his own. He knew he was smart. He learned this fact some time ago but it had surprised him when he figured it out. How had that happened? His mother and father didn’t seem like anything special. A child’s I.Q. is only as great as the average of the parents, wasn’t it? Perhaps they had been smart once, long ago before the alcohol and the depression and the miscarriages.

“If you can just learn to be a little more patient, learn to better control your temper, you would have perfect marks. Your other teachers and I, we can all see your intelligence,” Miss Gorev said. “And your humor and kindness. It is when you give into your frustrations and get so angry that we worry.” Aleksis stared at his teacher wondering what she was talking about. “Never mind. This is a conversation for a much later date I suppose.” Miss Gorev sighed and then looked at her watch. “I think everyone’s gone for today,” she added, feeling awkward. What do you say to a child in a situation like this? Miss Gorev didn’t know.

Aleksis looked back around at his teacher, wondering if she was going to offer him some more strange adult advice and prepared himself to tune it out. When she didn’t say anything more, he was grateful. “Thank you, Miss Gorev. See you tomorrow.” She nodded and watched him leave, the nine-year-old boy who was as tall as she was at 167 centimeters.

Walking down the hall, Aleksis dragged his feet, purposely going slowly toward the exit, stalling his arrival back at home as long as could tolerate. He was about to give up on his slow walking and just go home at a normal pace when he heard it: gentle but resonating notes of music. Following the sound, Aleksis came to the open door of the room and poked his head in. A man was seated at a piano and was playing the instrument beautifully. The music he played was sad and slow but with a sort of urgency to the notes, making Aleksis wonder what mood the composer had been in when writing. Suddenly, the man looked up and, still playing the piano, grinned at Aleksis. “Do you like my playing?” the man asked. Aleksis took a step back, surprised that he had been noticed. He nodded and the man’s grin softened into a smile. “I don’t bite, you know.” Aleksis hesitated only a moment before entering the room.

Continuing to watch the man play the piano, Aleksis became more and more transfixed and when he was close enough to see the man’s hands dance across the keys, Aleksis was stunned. How on earth did someone learn to do that? The song ended on a dissonant note and the man turned. “That was Debussy,” he said. “He died a long time ago, in 1918.” Aleksis remained quiet. The lives of the dead held no special meaning for him at his young age, they were just people who had come and gone before him. “So,” the man said. “Would you like to learn how to play the piano?”

Aleksis was taken aback. “Why?” he asked, suspicious of the man’s motives.

The man just shrugged. “I want a good student and you are the first child today who has shown any interest in the piano. So, I figure, why not?”

Aleksis’ mind turned, logically shuffling through who the man could be. “Are you a new music teacher?” he asked.

The man nodded. “Vitaliy Zakharov. It’s nice to meet you.” Aleksis didn’t offer his name in return, still waiting to see what kind of man Vitaliy Zakharov was. Vitaliy didn’t miss a beat. “Come,” he said, patting a hand on the bench next to him. “I will teach you.” The piano was too enticing for him not to; Aleksis moved and sat on the bench, his backpack sliding down one arm to slump on the floor, forgotten.

“Now what?” Aleksis asked. Vitaliy laughed at his cocky, impatient attitude.

“Playing the piano takes patience and dedication, kid. It is not something to be banged at until you get a result.”

Aleksis bristled at being called “kid”. “My name is Aleksis.”

“Aleksis,” Vitaliy repeated. “Short for Aleksander?” Aleksis nodded. “That’s an interesting nickname, usually I hear Aleksey or Sasha.” When the boy didn’t say anything, Vitaliy shrugged. “Okay, we start at middle C.” Vitaliy took Aleksis’ right hand and put his thumb on the center white key. “Your hands are big,” Vitaliy said, placing the rest of Aleksis’ right hand fingers on the keys, pinky ending on G. “This is good, you can reach the octave easily.” The words and concepts were foreign to Aleksis’ ears but he enjoyed learning something new. Vitaliy continued, “All pianos have 88 keys made up of the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Those black keys there are variations on these notes and are known as their sharps and flats…”

Aleksis let Vitaliy’s words wash over him, soaking in all that he could of his first piano lesson. He wasn’t worried about getting home on time, his mother would be too drunk to notice his absence and his father wouldn’t finish work for another two hours. Vitaliy told him to press certain keys down to get a feel for the instrument. The world faded away completely then, Aleksis focusing only on the sounds of the piano. The notes he played were clumsy and disjointed, but to Aleksis’ ears they were as sweet as any symphony.

It took him a while to notice when Vitaliy had stopped speaking. “What?” Aleksis said.

Vitaliy smiled. “That’s enough for one day, don’t you think?” Aleksis’ eyes shot to the clock on the wall. It had been an hour and fifteen minutes since he first sat down on the bench next to Vitaliy. It hadn’t seemed that long. “Did you have to be home by now?” Vitaliy asked, but boy just shook his head. “Alright then,” Vitaliy shrugged, a gesture, Aleksis noted with some humor, of which the man seemed very fond. “Tomorrow? Same time?” Aleksis nodded as he picked up his backpack and ran to the door.

“Thank you!” he called over his shoulder as he left. Vitaliy raised a hand in acknowledgment before starting to play another song, the music following Aleksis as he walked out of the school. Aleksis hadn’t realized how late it was while he played the piano, but he was grateful the time had passed so quickly, delaying him from going home without him having to think about it at all. Still riding that high, Aleksis wondered how he could stall even more. What he really wanted to do was learn more about the piano… A thought struck him. If he went to the public library he could kill both birds with one stone. Walking quickly, Aleksis made his way to a nearby bus stop with a route that would take him by the closest public library. Bouncing on the toes of his feet impatiently, Aleksis was frowning by the time the bus arrived about seven minutes later, annoyed that he had to wait that long. He shoved himself onto the bus first and ran out the doors when they opened in front of the library.

“I need books on playing the piano,” Aleksis demanded of a librarian behind the main counter inside the library. She gave him a look. “Please,” he added, remembering his manners under her glare.

“Non-fiction section, through those doors. You’ll want music theory and then piano technique from there,” the librarian replied quickly, trying to finish her sentence before Aleksis went out of earshot; he had started jogging in the direction of the doors before she had finished. “Rude little boy,” the librarian muttered watching Aleksis push open the doors and disappear into “non-fiction”.

The library was open late on Tuesdays so Aleksis had until eight o’clock before closing. Good, he thought, wandering past shelves, searching for the music theory books. I have lots of time. Eventually finding the section dedicated to the piano, he plunked himself down in the middle of the aisle and grabbed as many books as he could down from the shelves. He laid them on the ground before him, the open books creating a circle around his crossed legs. For the next two and a half hours, Aleksis read all he could understand about the piano. Some words were too advanced for his young vocabulary and some parts were so dull he found himself having to resist a very strong urge to rip the pages out from the book. Some parts just didn’t make sense, although Aleksis supposed that would have to come with time. He jumped from book to book, picking one up, skimming it before impatient to read the next book, waiting to absorb as much information from as many books as he could in this one sitting. Quickly, Aleksis lost track of the time and didn’t notice when the library fell even more silent than usual.

A hand fell on his shoulder. “You’re still here?” Aleksis yelped at the surprise and turned. It was the librarian who had given him directions earlier. “The library closes is ten minutes.”

Aleksis heaved a sigh and looked back around at the mess he had made. Slowly getting up from his cramped position on the floor, Aleksis stretched and then began to shelve the books, almost regretfully, hating to leave them behind. “You know, you can take some of the books with you if you have a library card.” The librarian seemed to be stifling a giggle. Aleksis glared at her.

“I don’t need one.” He quickly finished putting the books back in their rightful positions and brushed past the librarian, ignoring her indignant sigh at his rude behavior.

“But then you can check them out and read them on your own time at home,” she protested, following him out to the library entrance so she could lock the doors behind him.

Aleksis was tired. He had overloaded his brain with piano playing and piano reading and all he wanted to do was eat something and sleep. He turned. “That’s not the point. I read them here so I’m not at home.” He exited the library; beginning to run when he saw the bus he needed coming down the street.

Aleksis was very late in getting home, much later than he had ever been before. He knew he wouldn’t get in trouble, but perhaps they would be worried. Aleksis briefly let himself fantasize that his mother would be in tears, head in hands, sitting on the sofa as his father paced back and forth yelling into the phone at the police for them to do something, to do whatever it took to find his son.

He was disappointed when he opened his apartment door. His father was home but he wasn’t pacing on the phone. Instead Pytor was where he always was, leaning back in his recliner chair and half asleep watching the news. He hadn’t changed out of his scrubs yet, and still had the security badge reading “radiology technician” clipped to his chest pocket. Aleksis’ mother was on the couch, stretched out on her back, one arm thrown over her forehead, shielding her eyes from something. Aleksis hoped it was a headache. The television was on and blaring the news, something about the price of Russian gold.

“I learned how to play the piano today,” he announced to the room, slamming the door. Neither his father nor mother stirred. “My teacher, Vitaliy Zakharov, is really nice and said I could someday be a concert pianist.” Aleksis lied hoping for a reaction. When he didn’t get one he shrugged his backpack and jacket off in the doorway and stomped loudly into the apartment. He saw the empty dishes on the table but he had expected them to have already eaten and actually liked it better. When they forgot to feed him he had free rein in the kitchen to eat what he wanted and until he was full without anyone commenting on what or how much he consumed.

“Did you hear me?” he repeated himself, walking so he stood between his father’s chair and his mother lying on the couch. “I’m going to play the piano.” Aleksis could feel his impatience tighten within him.

Milla finally stirred. “That’s nice,” she mother said, waving a hand at Aleksis from her prone position. “I used to play the piano...” She trailed off, not elaborating on the memory but Aleksis stiffened. He imagined briefly what his life would be like with a piano in the apartment and a sober mother teaching him how to play the instrument, gently correcting his mistakes and laughing happily as they practiced together.

“The piano?” He was unable to keep his voice from cracking.

“I played it since I was twelve,” his mother said in a dreamy voice.

“Why didn’t you teach me?” Aleksis asked. His mother shrugged, already loosing interest in the subject.

“Didn’t feel like it, I suppose.”

Tired, frustrated, and hungry, Aleksis’ patience snapped. “What is wrong with you?” he yelled at his mother who looked at him, startled. “Why don’t you do anything?” Aleksis yelled again, unable to stop his voice from rasping up into a desperate scream. “You just sit there!” He looked at his father who said nothing, keeping his eyes locked on the television screen. Aleksis turned back to the bloodshot eyes of his mother not caring that she was hung-over. The anger he felt rising within him would be impossible to stop now, the bubbling and burning within his veins would keep coming and coming until he got it all out. Aleksis felt hot tears on his cheeks and angrily wiped them away. Neither of his parents had said anything “Pay attention to me!” he screamed at the both of them, moving to stand in front of the television. That got a reaction. His father sat up in his chair.

“Hey, boy! Move!” Pytor was angling his body to try and see the screen around his son.

“Shut up!” Aleksis shrieked. “Shut up!” His entire body shook with the waves of his emotion, trembling also in the frustration of not knowing more words with which to express his fury.

Pytor’s face darkened and he pointed at Aleksis. “You will show us some respect!”

“I don’t respect you!” Aleksis shouted, not exactly sure what the word “respect” meant, but if his father wanted it, he refused to give it. He glared at his mother who was now crying, helplessly reaching out for him. He evaded her touch. “I hate you.”

Milla burst into fresh tears. “We love you Aleksey,” his mother said pitifully.

Aleksis’ anger hit its peak. “My name is Aleksis!” he bellowed, turning and grabbing the television set with both his hands, bringing it up over his head and smashing it down on the ground. “My name is Aleksis!” he howled again, standing over the smashed television set. He looked up at his parents: his father was staring at the television, hands on the arms of his chair as if he were about to stand up; his mother was propped up on her side, looking at Aleksis in shock. “Shit!” Aleksis yelled, using the only swear word he knew before going to his bedroom and slamming the door as hard as he could. A picture frame crashed to the ground somewhere in the living room.

That night, it was quiet. Aleksis couldn’t hear his parents having sex on the couch or in their bedroom and his mother didn’t crawl into his room to apologize like she always did. Aleksis was left to fall asleep in complete silence for the first time in his life.

He came home from the library the day after he had smashed the television expecting… He didn’t know what. The apartment was empty, his father maybe had taken an extra night shift and his mother was most likely at a liquor store. He sighed and walked to the kitchen, driven by his stomach. Opening the fridge, Aleksis was surprised to discover a huge bowl of spaghetti and meatballs placed in the center of one of the shelves. He grabbed the bowl and a fork from a drawer and ate the pasta cold, too hungry to heat it up in the microwave. As he ate, Aleksis realized his mother had left this dinner for him, purposefully remembering to make him extra food and to leave it for him in the fridge. The thought shocked him. It was so out of character for her that something must have… Aleksis swallowed a meatball hard, almost choking on it. Smashing the television had worked; he had gotten their attention. Aleksis didn’t know what to do with this information and as he finished his dinner in silence sitting on the kitchen floor, he thought.

When he arrived home the next night, his parents were in their bedroom, behind a closed door. Aleksis immediately looked in the fridge and grabbed the container of stew that had been left for him. The day after that on the bus ride home from the library, Aleksis was hoping he would get pizza one of these days. Running up the stairs to the apartment, stomach growling as usual, his face fell when he heard the sound of a television before he opened the front door. There his parents were, sitting before a new television set as if the last three days had never happened. Aleksis went to the fridge. There was no carefully prepared meal waiting for him. “Did you make me dinner?” he asked the both of them, voice raised over the volume of the screen.

“Make it yourself,” Aleksis’ father replied. “Your mother is asleep.” Aleksis looked at the kitchen clock, noting that she had passed out early tonight. It was Friday though; she always drank more on Fridays. He made himself three tuna fish sandwiches and went to bed.

“Now,” Vitaliy was saying to Aleksis a week after their first lesson. “There is an easy way to remember the sharps and flats in each scale. We’ll just go over the sharps in the major scales first. It’s called…”

Aleksis cut him off. “The circle of fifths?” he asked.

Vitaliy stared at the boy for a moment before moving on. “Exactly right. So, from the top and around to the right like a clock, it goes…”

Aleksis interrupted again. “C with no sharps; G with one on the F; D with two on F and C; A with…” Aleksis trailed off. Vitaliy was looking at him with a strange expression.

“Can you do the whole thing?” Vitaliy asked. Aleksis nodded. “And the flats? And the minor circle too?” Aleksis nodded again. Vitaliy narrowed his eyes. “And you understand it?”

Aleksis broke into a huge grin. “I go to the library after our lessons and read books on piano theory. The circle of fifths was one of the only thing I could memorize so far.”

Vitaliy noticed how Aleksis sat up straighter, wiggling a bit in his seat on the piano bench. He let out a short laugh. “You’re quite proud of yourself aren’t you?” Aleksis smiled wider and nodded, then tried to mimic the shrug Vitaliy was always doing. “Fine, I’m glad you’re studying but you still need to go over the basics and,” Vitaliy added with extra emphasis as he saw Aleksis’ attention start to wander. “You need to let me teach them to you. You can’t learn everything from a book.” Aleksis nodded solemnly. His face had turned so serious so quickly Vitaliy had to laugh again. “Okay, we’ll play now. Repeat after me…” They played and Aleksis learned.

Since Aleksis didn’t have a piano at home, Vitaliy agreed to teach him for an hour after school, Monday through Friday. After each lesson, Aleksis went to the library and read all that he could about piano theory. It didn’t take him long to find where all the soundproofed practice rooms containing pianos around his apartment were, and which ones were free. On weekends, Aleksis bounced between music stores playing on the keyboards, to universities playing on sleek black uprights. Whatever he could get, he took. Always, and always, he avoided the apartment.

His piano lessons continued, and for the next two weeks they gave Aleksis something else to think about besides the behavior of his parents. It even distracted him from the taunting of his peers at school. They would scream and run when he walked down the hallway or they would throw their words at him, insulting his size, calling him “freak” and “monster”. Aleksis didn’t hear them; the piano music that played in his mind was loud enough to drown out their jeering. Aleksis lasted another week before needing his parent’s attention again.

They were about to get in the car to drive to church, his mother swaying as she walked around the vehicle, hand fumbling for the handle, when Aleksis realized he didn’t want to go. “I want to stay home,” he said. His mother said nothing and got in the car, ignoring him. His father was smoking a cigarette, trying to finish it quickly before getting in the car where he could have another before arriving at church. He ignored Aleksis too. “I’m staying at home,” Aleksis said again, in a stronger voice.

Pytor inhaled and exhaled smoke. “Get in the car,” he said, checking his back pockets for sunglasses. Aleksis wondered if his father would ever look at him.

“No,” Aleksis said, deciding that if his father didn’t want to look him in the eye he could always make him. He glanced around. There was a loose brick lining the pathway that led to their apartment complex and Aleksis’ eyes darted straight to it.

Pytor saw what his son was looking at and made the connection. “Don’t you dare,” he warned too late. Aleksis sprinted over to where the brick lay and threw it as hard as he could at the driver’s side of the car. Glass shattered as the brick easily smashed through the window and landed on the seat. His mother screamed, covering her face with her hands and dropping her mug full of whiskey and coffee in her lap. She screamed again as the hot liquid burned her legs. He turned to see what his father was doing and was elated that Pytor was finally looking at him. Aleksis felt a rush of power and energy surge through him. “Who is going to pay for that?” Pytor screamed. Aleksis gave a Vitaliy-style shrug. He didn’t know or care.

They didn’t go to church that day, instead they drove Milla to the hospital to treat her burns. Aleksis sat in the waiting room next to his father for seven hours, waiting for his mother to be cared for and then released. On the drive home, which was quite cold with the open window, Pytor lectured him and Milla asked him over and over again why he had acted like this. Aleksis sat quietly in the backseat, contentedly listening to the sounds of their voices, pretending they were telling him stories.

“You have something in your hair, Aleksis,” Vitaliy said to him during their lesson the next day on Monday. Aleksis sat sill as his teacher moved to grab something from his head. It was a piece of the car window. “It is glass, Aleksis,” Vitaliy said sounding slightly alarmed. “Why do you have glass in your hair?”

“Our car window was smashed,” Aleksis answered simply. “But we still had to drive it to church.”

Vitaliy threw the small shard away in the trash. “Sounds very dramatic,” he said with a smile. “Come, finish the song.”

It didn’t take long for Aleksis’ life to become cyclical: Act out, receive attention. He began to talk back to his schoolteachers and to act out toward his classmates violently. After he punched a little blonde boy named Ivan so hard the child’s nose broke, Aleksis' parents were called into the administrative offices for behavioral meetings. “We’re confused,” Aleksis’ teachers all said. “Usually the children with anger problems don’t also have perfect grades like Aleksis has.”

“He doesn’t do any of his work in class,” one teacher added. “But when it comes time for the test at the end of the week, he gets a perfect score.”

Another teacher nodded, agreeing. “Exactly! He knows the material but doesn’t care at all to study. Very poor student skills.”

His parents would promise the teachers that he would shape up, promised that they would check up on his homework every night and Aleksis would always think that this time, maybe this time, things would be different. The only difference Aleksis noticed was the increase in the number of empty bottles in the trash.

Aleksis wasn’t the only one to notice a change. Vitaliy broached the subject of his bad behavior to him a few weeks after he started getting in trouble. “Aleksis, is there something you want to talk about?” Aleksis looked at his teacher, confused. He gave a shrug. Vitaliy sighed. “Some of the other teachers are telling me about your behavior and I find some of it hard to believe. Talking back, being rude, even getting physical with the other boys in your class…” Vitaliy trialed off with a smile, looking down at his pupil, knowing it couldn’t be true. When Aleksis hung his head in shame, Vitaliy’s smile was instantly wiped clean. “Aleksis are you serious? You can’t be doing these kind of things, you…” Vitaliy stopped when Aleksis interrupted him.

“Why not?” Aleksis said, looking up and jutting out his chin in a challenge. “No one notices me if I don’t.” Vitaliy could see his lower lib tremble ever so slightly. Vitaliy sighed.

“Aleksis, I’m going to give you some advice now that has nothing to do with the piano and it is important that you listen to me, understand?” Vitaliy stared hard at Aleksis who held his gaze before nodding seriously. “Good. Budge over a bit.” Vitaliy shooed his hands at Aleksis who made room for his teacher on the piano bench. Vitaliy spread his hands out over the piano keys and played a beautifully smooth arpeggio in C major.

“I thought you said this isn’t about piano,” Aleksis said with a smirk.

Vitaliy returned the crooked smile. “You caught me. I can’t think very well without music, it helps me put my thoughts in order.” Vitaliy played through G major and then stopped, turning to face the young boy. “You and I have worked very hard to put grace into your piano playing, right?” Aleksis nodded.

“It’s because my hands are so big and clumsy.” He waggled his fingers at Vitaliy who caught them and held them.

“Big? Yes, definitely. Clumsy? No. You see yourself that way because you have no respect for yourself. You see yourself in only one way, as this lurching oaf with violence as your only means to an end.” There was that word again, “respect”. Aleksis promised himself to look it up in the dictionary at the library the next day. Vitaliy was still talking. “But that is not true.” His teacher spread Aleksis’ hands and placed them delicately on the piano keys. “You are smart and charming and very much capable of being more than just a violent being.” Vitaliy looked down at Aleksis who was wearing a funny look on his face that said he didn’t really get it. Vitaliy let out a small chuckle. “Let me start again.”

Aleksis grinned. “Okay.”

“You’re big, Aleksis, very big, much larger than anyone your age. So it’s not fair to the other boys in your class, beating up on them when you’re the size of their older brothers or even fathers.” Aleksis’ grin had vanished from his face. He felt sick to his stomach. Vitaliy kept going. “Until you learn to control your self, learn to control your body, you will be a danger to yourself and others.” Vitaliy then caught a glimpse of Aleksis’ ashen colored face and started to backpedal. “Aleksis! No, no, no I didn’t mean… I just meant that you… Fuck.”

Aleksis looked up, startled. He loved when adults swore around him, he liked learning the words and seeing the adults loose control but he had never pegged Vitaliy to be the kind to loose that control. Vitaliy grinned sheepishly down at Aleksis who just stared back, waiting for his teacher to make the thoughts he was trying to communicate clearer. “Yes?” he prompted.

Vitaliy sighed. “Who am I to tell you what you can or cannot do, outside of piano of course?” Vitaliy winked but Aleksis didn’t smile. “Beat people up all you want, Aleksis, I can’t control what you do. I can tell you, however, that you will be in a world of trouble if you continue beating up kids your age. You’re much stronger than them and they could get seriously hurt putting you in a lot of trouble.” Vitaliy sized the boy up subconsciously. “A lot of trouble,” he emphasized. “What I’m saying is wait. Just wait until you can take these little fights elsewhere, or until your opponents get bigger, catch up with you.”

“You…you don’t care if I fight?” Aleksis was having trouble processing. Here was an adult telling him to do what he wanted, without any negative attention either.

“If you’re so determined to follow this path, I certainly won’t get in your way or try and steer you from it. I’m just telling you to be careful, and maybe cool it for a few years. Focus on this beautiful instrument before you and wait until you’re older and everyone else is as big as you. And who knows? Maybe by then you’ll have changed your mind.”

Aleksis snorted. “Fat chance,” he promised darkly, his young rage still at a high boiling point within him.

“Aleksis?” a woman’s voice came from the door. Vitaliy and Aleksis looked up to see Milla standing in the doorway. Aleksis looked to the clock and groaned inwardly. He was a little later in finishing his lesson today because he had been talking with Vitaliy so much. He hadn’t wanted his mother to come to the piano room, but to meet him outside like she always did. What would Vitaliy think? Aleksis looked back to his teacher who had an odd look on his face. Vitaliy stood up abruptly, causing the piano bench to scrape loudly, even though Aleksis still sat upon it.

“My mother has to pick me up so I don’t get in trouble,” Aleksis offered by way of explanation for her presence in the room, and to get Vitaliy’s attention away from her. “School rules.”

“Your mother?” Vitaliy asked, frowning slightly with a charming smile, striding forward confidently and extending a hand.

“Milla Kaidanovsky,” Aleksis said introducing her. Vitaliy’s face shifted immediately into surprise when he heard her name. Moving to clasp her hand with his, Vitaliy smiled up at her, the woman was a head taller than he was.

“Not the same Milla Kaidanovsky who once played for the Moscow City Opera? My dear if you are the same pianist who so moved my heart when I last went to see the opera some years ago, I am honored to meet you.”

Milla giggled. Aleksis stared up at his mother; he had never before heard her giggle in his life. “Yes, that was me.”

Vitaliy searched her eyes. “Do you still play?”

“I gave it up when my son was born,” Milla said, dropping her gaze from Vitaliy’s. Aleksis couldn’t help but hear the scorn in her voice when she said the word “son”.

“A shame,” Vitaliy was saying, shaking his head. “What a shame.” Aleksis moved to hang on his mother’s arm, annoying her enough that he forced her to take him home.

“It was nice to meet you,” Milla said to Vitaliy as they left. Aleksis was surprised she wasn’t slurring her words. Perhaps the walk from their apartment to the school had sobered her a bit. Aleksis was appalled when Vitaliy insisted on walking them out of the school and watching them as they made their way home together. “Your teacher is very nice,” Milla said to Aleksis when they were halfway home.

Aleksis shrugged. “I guess.”

Milla was quiet for a long time before speaking up again. “You should continue with these piano lessons, Aleksis, they are good for you.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Aleksis whined, exasperated as they finally reached their apartment.

“Good,” Milla said with an absentminded tone. “Maybe I’ll make dinner tonight to celebrate.”

Aleksis’ ears perked up at “dinner” but he was confused. “Celebrate what?” But they were already in their apartment and his mother was already more focused on what wine to pair with the pasta then answering her son.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took me over three weeks to write. Of course, I was moving across the city in that time, but I felt this next installment needed more rigorous attention than usual. A lot of information had to be conveyed and a lot of action had to take place. Also, I love Sasha so much that I really felt the need to dig into this part of her life and explore everything I could. I had a real live Marine as my beta for this chapter (thank you [tequila0341](http://tequila0341.tumblr.com)!!!) and he must have read it and sent it back to me thousands of times telling me what was real and what was just silly. I really hope you enjoy this chapter as it is so long and literally took me almost a month to write.
> 
> Please be warned that there are some sexist and homophobic remarks in this chapter as we are dealing with the military here and I wanted to be realistic.

Sasha - Age 16

2007

 

A hard slap hit the bare skin of her stomach and Sasha tightened her abdominal muscles to absorb the pain. “Stand up straight,” her father commanded harshly. He was circling his daughter in the living room of their tiny apartment, inspecting every inch of her body. Sasha sucked in her stomach and adjusted her shoulders. “And stop shivering.” Sasha bit the inside of her cheek, trying to give her body some other sensation to concentrate on other than the cold air surrounding her body and her desire to punch her father in the face.

She was standing barefoot and unclothed except for plain white underwear and sport bra in the living room of her father’s apartment. Her feet were hip distance apart and her hands were interlocked behind her back, allowing him to easily see her whole body as he circled her. “Good,” he muttered occasionally. “Very good.” She tried not to roll her eyes, just barely tolerating her father’s final examination.

Since he had made her burn the ballet shoes when she was twelve, Sasha had counted down the years, months, and days to this exact moment, and it hadn’t come soon enough. Sixteen years too long under the roof of this man, this man who once was everything to her and who now was old and worthless. Sixteen years waiting for this day, the day she would leave him behind to live her life for herself.

“You may relax,” he finally said, handing her the clothes she had laid out that morning for her journey. She accepted them and dressed quickly, keeping him in her periphery. He was looking at her proudly. “Private Aleksandra Zolnerowich,” he said when she finished dressing and stood up, his voice full of emotion. It had not been easy, enlisting Sasha in the army. Her situation was uncommon enough from the start as both a woman and a volunteer, but her age was a whole other issue. The army would take Sasha, of course, but at sixteen years old her father had to supply a very specific letter of consent, filling out many additional documents, as well as calling in any favors being a war hero afforded him. Yet, to him this was all worth it for now here was his child, his perfect creation, ready to enter basic combat training.

Sasha didn’t return his proud gaze. “Father, I am not yet a private. I have many steps to go in my training.”

He waved this away. “Yes but you are going to be training as a soldier, Sasha! What a day this is for me. My child, my Not Snow: a soldier fighting for the Motherland.” Her father grinned but Sasha ignored him. She knew that, as a woman, she would never see direct combat. She did have plans, however, to become the highest-ranking officer possible and would strive toward that goal until she was either satisfied or dead.

His smile faltered at his daughter’s unresponsive attitude and he moved to inspect her clothing, busying himself to avoid the awkwardness he felt around Sasha. Had she behaved in this way when she was younger and much smaller, he would have brought her to submission on the training mat in the basement. Now, he hardly dared touch her. His daughter’s skill in hand-to-hand combat had far surpassed his own two years earlier, when she was fourteen. When he realized this, they had moved on to weapons training. He instructed her on everything from staves to throwing knives, taking her to gun and even archery ranges. After she had mastered these shortly before her fifteenth birthday, he coached her in physical exercises only, timing her runs or counting out bench-press reps. He never again sparred with her, it was far too dangerous.

In the living room, he circled her one last time before stopping at her front. “Lift your chin, Sasha. That’s it, good.” She held her heavily muscled body proudly, her blue eyes glittering, hiding a mind honed sharp to the ways of battle strategy, military history, and all things combat. She had grown into a beautiful, finely tuned human weapon and they both knew it. “I am so proud,” her father said. “Look at you, all of you. Look at what I have created.” Sasha resisted the urge to vomit. He had taught her discipline, yes, taught her strength, and endurance and how to fight. These were lessons for which Sasha wasn’t ashamed to say she was grateful, but he had tried to break her, tried to bend her to his will, and that was one mistake Sasha would never forgive.

“I believe it is time for me to catch the bus,” Sasha said, trying to move this process along. He glanced over at the wall clock and nodded. He watched as she stooped to pick up her duffle bag and slung it easily over her shoulders; well-defined muscles handling the weight of the bag as if it were as light as a pillow.

He held out a hand awkwardly. “Let me take that for you.” Sasha stared at him and blinked before handing off the bag. If he wanted to haul the thing all the way to the bus station, so be it.

As they walked together, her father talked at her, telling stories of his youth in the army, speaking over the sound of her silence. Sasha had heard all these tales before and she let the words fall back to a dull buzzing in her ears. The closer they drew to the bus, the more agitated her father became. “You’re going to love it, of this I have no doubt. The discipline of it all is astounding to be sure, but you will have the chance to finally show the world who you are, what you can do.” He shifted her bag to his other shoulder. “I wish I could be there to see their faces when they see what kind of soldier you are.”

Once at the bus station, it didn’t take long for Sasha to procure a ticket. The paper in hand, Sasha spotted the bus she needed idling a short way down the side of the station walkway and began to walk toward it. She was stopped by her father’s voice. “Will you not give your Papa one last hug?” he asked, words cracking slightly in his throat. Sasha turned back to see him holding his arms out to her. He seemed smaller now to her eyes, smaller than she ever remembered. In the last year she had grown taller than him, but the difference in their heights at that moment was more distinct than ever. Sasha was tall, young, and beautiful and he was tiny, insignificant, and rotting; the last of a dying breed.

She stuck out her chin. “I am soon to be a soldier in the Land Forces of the Russian Federation. I show no weakness and I will not hug you.” His face fell and the expression at once squeezed at her heart but Sasha swallowed hard against the feeling.

“You are right,” he said, dropping his arms down to his sides. Sasha moved to get on the bus. “You will write to me, Sasha. Of your training and all that happens.” He called out his last command, holding her back for one moment more.

She considered this. “No,” she said, and boarded the bus.

“Ticket, miss,” the driver said to her when she had climbed the stairs. Sasha handed him the paper ticket, her limbs moving slowly as if she were in a dream. “Thank you, miss.” She turned, sleepwalking to find a seat.

When she found an empty space near the back she sat down heavily, letting out a gasp and clutching at her chest. She had read once in a book somewhere that children must kill their parents in order to succeed them. So this was what that feels like, she told herself. Sasha wanted to steal a glance out the window, to look at him and see if he had died, but she held out against the temptation. “I have killed you and I will not look back.” She spoke the words softly. “I will not.”

The bus she sat in was a long-distance vehicle, a coach, with cushioned seats staggered in pairs on either side of a center aisle. Sasha had taken a window space and put her duffle in the seat next to her. She didn’t think anyone would try to sit where her bag was, but she wanted to make her message especially clear: she was alone and wanted to remain that way.

A loud honk blared out from the front of the bus, the noise startling Sasha. Her heart pounded as they began to drive away and she sat up in her seat, curling her fists. She knew he would be watching the bus, waiting for his little child soldier to lean out the window and wave at her precious Papa. So she remained sitting, jaw clenched, eyes staring straight ahead. Let him die inside, Sasha wished bitterly. Let him now understand that I am not his, that I was never his, and let him break as he once tried to break me.

On the sidewalk of the bus station, in the shade of the overhang, a man wept quietly. He held a hand out to a receding bus: a last goodbye. “I love you,” he whispered before he shuffled back to his apartment, alone and directionless for the first time in his life.

An hour later, the bus dropped Sasha off at a train station just north of Moscow’s city center. Winding her way through the crowd, Sasha searched for the right platform with her train, consulting her ticket multiple times. She was to travel to the army base in Yaroslavl to commence her basic training for the next twelve weeks. By rail, the journey would take about four hours, not counting the extra half hour Sasha was just told she had to wait before she could board by a station manager. Unsure of how to pass the time, Sasha looked around and spotted a convenience shop, nestled between a coffee hut and an information booth across from the platform. She wandered over to kill time browsing the stacks.

The store had magazines, candy, various knickknacks for tourists, and toiletry essentials for those weary travelers who may have forgotten an item or two. Sasha made her way farther into the shop, wandering the short aisles aimlessly until coming to one shelf, the contents of which stopping her short. She was in the beauty aisle, the products here clearly marketed toward young women, with pink boxes and looping fonts. One box in particular, one of the few that weren’t a garish shade of pink, had caught her eye.

A loud whistle sounded from the platform and a voice called out that Sasha’s train was now ready for passengers. Her head jerked up, startled out of her thoughts. Hesitating only a second, she grabbed the box and hurriedly made her way to the counter to pay for item. The woman who rang up her purchase looked at Sasha with a raised eyebrow, perhaps wanting to comment on the choice, but Sasha ignored her, impatiently waiting to pay. “Have a safe trip,” the woman said with a slight attitude when she handed Sasha a plastic bag, made heavy with the box. Sasha grabbed it and ran to the train.

Unlike on the bus with her duffle bag on the seat next to her, it was now the little box that filled the space. It seemed to stare at her, possessing more mass than was possible. Sasha fidgeted. As the train sped onward through the city of Moscow and then through the countryside, heading north, she couldn’t get comfortable. She wiggled in her seat, staring at the window, trying to sleep, trying to ignore the box that was next to her. Annoyed, Sasha eventually dug in her bag for one of the four books she had packed: all plays and all by William Shakespeare.

It was in the autumn when she was twelve, after the summer of punishing Sasha for the shoes, that her father decided to homeschool her, finally able to micro-manage every aspect of her life. He was a fine teacher, ensuring that she passed all the tests and was actually learning something over the years. Sasha’s dyslexia continued to plague her, but in the slower learning environment of her home, her intelligence progressed more rapidly than it would have done in public school. Her love for the English language remained, although she was no great student of the tongue, her command of the foreign words always blocked from any real progress by her dyslexia, until she discovered English literature.

Sasha’s preference for British, Irish, and American writings was nothing short of a direct defiance of her father and his distaste of books. He thought reading a frivolous luxury, English stories usurpers of the Russian language, and books in general to be waste of time unless they were of military tactics or battle histories. So Sasha read in protest, collecting together a parade of authors she explored with a flashlight in her bed long after her father went to sleep. Marlowe and Donne and Bowen and Joyce and Faulkner and O’Connor and Shakespeare, above all Shakespeare, teaching her how to speak a new language, in spite of her impediment. She still hated to study and hated her classes, but she loved to read, couldn’t get enough of it, even if it took her twice as long as the average person.

The book she currently held on the train to Yaroslavl was a well-thumbed paperback English and Russian printing of _The Tempest_ , her favorite, but she still couldn’t concentrate on reading. The edition of the book contained a line-by-line Russian translation on the left pages, with the original text on the right. The pages on the English side were heavily annotated in pen containing notes Sasha had made during her many readings of the play. She flipped through the book, trying to become inspired enough to read, but it was no use; she was too distracted. She glanced sideways at the box in plastic bag on the seat next to her.

“That is why I call you ‘Not Snow’.” Sasha heard her father’s words echo in her mind. “You are dark and you are midnight, born unto me, my daughter, my own.” Sasha grabbed the box and got up from her seat and went to the bathroom at one end of the train car. It was larger than most train bathrooms, as it was wheelchair accessible, but it was still cramped. Hands shaking slightly, she locked the door and straddled the small room, placing her legs in a wide stance to balance as best she could against the rocking of the train.

“Not yours,” she growled, to her reflection in the tiny bathroom mirror. “I belong to no one.” She shook the box out from the plastic bag into the sink, the cardboard carton containing an at home hair bleaching kit. Unfolding the thin piece of paper that came in the box, Sasha read the instructions carefully, following along with the steps and mixing the right packets of chemicals into one bottle with a nozzle at one end.

“You are dark, opposite of the snow in every way.”

She put on the flimsy, crinkly gloves from the box.

“You are my ‘Not Snow’.”

She looked at herself in the mirror: pupils pin pricks in her eyes, her mouth hanging slightly open.

“Not son.”

Sasha moved the bottle of bleach to her hairline and squeezed. The harsh, metallic smelling mixture came out of the nozzle easily and soon her entire head was coated in the goopy stuff. She didn’t have much hair to dye, having recently cut it short for the military. Sasha massaged the stuff into her hair, covering every inch, and tried not to breathe through her nose. The chemicals in the close quarters made her eyes sting. Looking down at the paper, Sasha read that for hair as dark as hers she should wait at least forty-five minutes for the bleach to work. She counted the minutes sitting on the toilet seat lid, yelling at people to go away if they knocked.

Sasha waited a little longer than the suggested amount of time, wanting to be sure every last hair strand was whitened as much as possible, before rinsing out the stuff. She bent her neck painfully this way and that into the sink of the train bathroom, continuously hitting faucet so the water wouldn’t time out and she could wash the excess bleach from her hair. She scrubbed for the better part of an hour, the small sink not meant to make such a task easy. Consulting the directions on the delicate sheet of paper again, Sasha used the little packet of conditioner to wash and rinse out her hair again. Wads of toilet paper became her makeshift towel, sopping up the wetness until her hair was damp and manageable. She was finished.

Sasha looked at herself in the mirror and frowned. There was a feeling inside her then, something she had felt before… It was the feeling of a heartstring or a spider’s thread, an invisible line running all the way back to Moscow, connecting her still to her father.

She blinked. Her hair was blonde: bleached of the dark hair her father had loved so much, bleached of his memories and of his power over her. She was no longer “Not Snow”, she was the snow: harsh and cold and answering to no one but herself. Whatever it was inside her, whatever was stretched so taut from her to him, snapped. Sasha uttered a small cry of triumph, raking her fingers through her hair and grinning maniacally. The last finger on the rope in her soul had finally let go, and she was free.

Admiring her new self in the mirror, Sasha loved how harsh she now seemed. The hair color gave her a frightening look, the blonde intensifying the effect of her already cutting cheekbones and making her blue eyes icy instead of warm. Sasha barred her teeth at her reflection before quickly cleaning up the small bathroom and returning to her seat for the rest of the ride. She had spent so much time in the bathroom that there was only an hour left before the train pulled into the station in Yaroslavl. She de-boarded and made her way outside the building, searching for the bus that would be picking her and other new recruits up from the many trains that pulled into the station.

It was obvious where she had to go. There was an uncomfortable looking schoolbus at the far end of the parking lot with a group of people milling about around it, looking very awkward as they clutched at duffle bags. Sasha quickly made her way over to the site, bag bouncing against her legs while she jogged. As she got closer, she counted the number of female recruits in the crowd: two. Sasha sighed, but this was to be expected. Before she could go stand by the women, a dark haired boy stepped in front of her path, interrupting her progress.

“You’re really blonde,” he said to her as she stopped walking abruptly. Sasha didn’t say anything, shrugging her shoulders and moving to walk around him. He sidestepped in front of her again. “I said,” he repeated. “You’re really blonde.”

“Yes, I am,” Sasha said, annoyed. “Why do you care?”

The boy shrugged. “No reason, just thought it was nice.” He winked before stepping back to let her pass. Sasha rolled her eyes and pushed past him, not bothering to stop her duffle back from bumping into his knees. She found her way to stand next to the two other women, nodding at them cordially. One of them nodded back, the other one looked too nervous and distracted to even notice Sasha’s presence. Sasha guessed they were older than her sixteen years, but she was never good with ages. In either case, they both looked uncomfortable around this many young men.

Sasha plunked her bag right down before them and stood with her back to them, unconsciously arranging her body language into that of a protector, and waited to receive orders from someone in charge. Sasha looked in the direction of the front of the bus, eyeing two men in official uniforms consulting one clipboard between the two of them. She noted their rank as non-commissioned officers from their parade uniforms: sergeant and junior sergeant. Two more male recruits joined their party from the direction of the train and the sergeant looked up from the clipboard, waiting until the two recruits were in earshot before speaking.

“Quiet!” he yelled at them all. “Smirnah!” He shouted again and Sasha was the only one who obeyed immediately, the other recruits stood at attention a beat late. Sasha caught the eye roll of the uniformed men. “These are the volunteers?” Sasha heard one say to the other. “They seem more like dumb dukhi.” The junior sergeant shrugged at his superior who sighed. “Just get on the bus. Hurry up!” he called out to the recruits who then hustled to bend and grab their duffels, lining up to board the bus pushing and shoving like children.

Sasha and the other two women hung back and waited until they could get on the bus without having to fight to do so. As they passed the men in uniforms, Sasha could almost feel the fear rolling off the body of the nervous female recruit who now stood in front of her. Don’t cower, Sasha thought. Don’t show any weakness. She wished all the strength she could onto the young woman, hoping desperately she would get on the bus without incident. The sergeants said nothing, but looked at the three female recruits with odd expressions. Sasha dared them to make a move. They didn’t, and all three of them boarded the bus without any further incident.

Sasha knew how men acted around women and their bodies. She wasn’t naive to the ways of assault on her gender and she knew the army would not be excluded from this trend. While she hadn’t experienced any direct repercussions of this nature, she knew it was only a matter of time before she would, it was how the world worked. Sasha twisted her lips in a humorless smile at this thought. At least she was prepared to handle it, unlike the nervous female recruit who was now sitting in the seat across from Sasha on the bus.

“Put your heads down!” The NCOs had boarded the bus and the sergeant was yelling at them all from his spot at the front. Sasha obeyed immediately, letting her blonde hair fall forward and cover her face. “Stay quiet!” he shouted before sitting down at the front with the junior sergeant and telling the bus driver he could begin the trip. They were in the bus for about forty-five minutes in complete silence. At one point a recruit from the seat behind Sasha grumbled a wish for some music. Sasha wanted to hit the kid: if the sergeants had heard him, they would have all been punished as soon as they arrived at the base. Sasha wondered if any of these recruits on the bus with her knew what discipline was.

When they arrived on the training base, Sasha felt the very air shift around her. Excited, she strained to look out the window without turning her head in case the sergeants noticed. Men in uniforms holding large guns were standing guard in certain places around the compound and the muffled sounds of shouts and chanting came from training fields just visible in the distance. Sasha bit her bottom lip in anticipation. The bus came to a halt near the front of a brick building, with pavement in front of it and a thick, yellow line painted on the ground.

“Stay!” the sergeant yelled before getting off the bus, followed by the junior sergeant. Sasha heard someone complain from the back of the bus that they weren’t dogs. She gritted her teeth and kept her head down. The sound of heavy footfall came to her ears a short time later: large boots upon the stair leading into the bus. Sasha inhaled a long breath through her nose and let it go out through her mouth. The boots reached the top of the stairs and she could hear them scuff as they turned, bringing whomever it was that wore them to face the rows of bus seats. She allowed herself a harsh smile beneath the curtain of her hair. It began... _now_.

“Get the fuck off your asses! Stand up and face me like the men you so desperately wish to be!” Sasha popped up first, her muscles primed for the command. “Oh, God save me, it’s a fucking girl!” The loud voice belonged to a senior sergeant in his late thirties or early forties with a mean looking face and an even meaner looking scar. The warped pink flesh wound its way from the base of his neck up across the right side of his face near his ear where it disappeared into his hairline. Sasha guessed due to his age and the experience evident in his grizzled face that he had fought for some time in Chechnya. His small, dark eyes darted around the bus, widening when he noticed the other two women. “Three girls? We’ve got three fucking girls? I don’t know what the hell has happened to the world if we have to rely on girls to defend the honor of our Motherland. May we all pray that Russia doesn’t fall to ruins around us as we speak!” Sasha saw out of the corner of her eye the female recruit in the seat next to her cringe a bit.

Chuckles rippled through the men in the bus, causing the senior sergeant’s attention to snap away from Sasha to the other two women. “Shut the fuck up faggots!” he roared and the recruits instantly fell silent. “You think that’s funny? Letting girls do your job for you? I only hope all you shit heads can live this shame down before you go crawling to your graves. Get the fuck off this bus, now!” The recruits sprang to action and the senior sergeant spoke again. “Sis’ki, Zadnitsa, Blondinka, get off last!” The senior sergeant yelled at the two girls and Sasha, labelling them with the crude nicknames of tits, ass, and blondie, respectively. Sasha said nothing, silently watching the male recruits get off the bus, thudding down the stairs past the senior sergeant only to be yelled at again by two new sergeants once they were outside. “What are you waiting for?” the senior sergeant on the bus yelled at the last three recruits. “Get out! Now! You too, Blondinka, let’s go!” Sasha grabbed her bag and marched quickly off the bus.

“Drop your bag!” a sergeant yelled at her as soon as she stepped foot on the ground. “Put your fucking bag on the ground over there! What do you have stuffed animals in there? All your makeup?” Sasha threw her bag into the pile of duffels from the other recruits. “Get the fuck over to the line! What are you waiting for!” Sasha jogged over to the end of the line and stood with her feet over the painted yellow stripe.

“Nut to butt here boys!” the other sergeant yelled, using the vulgar command to instruct the recruits on how to stand next to each other: with as little personal space as possible as they lined up backs to fronts. The line of recruits shuffled awkwardly, trying to stand as commanded but without touching. Sasha rolled her eyes at their hesitation to stand right behind each other. “What did I just fucking say?” a sergeant who had spotted this dithering yelled furiously to the line. He marched over to two boys who were farther apart than the rest, grabbing them by their collarbones and suddenly slamming them together, a forehead knocking against the back of a head. “Close enough to fuck each other, you fucking faggots!” Sasha tried not to wince when she heard the bone of their skulls collide. They stood very close together after that. “Like little fucking gay spoons!” the sergeants yelled.

“Hurry up, baby girls!” a sergeant screamed as the other two women scrambled to get off the bus. They dropped their bags in the pile and were screamed over to stand in the line behind Sasha. “Stand there until you are told otherwise, or so help me God!” the sergeant yelled to them all, letting the threat linger in the air. Sasha stood in line as she was told, her chest and pelvis flush with the body male recruit in front of her. She tried to make her chest as concave as possible but she knew he could feel her breasts on his back. It wouldn’t be so bad if he was standing up straight. Sasha could see that his posture was horrible and wanted him to fix it before he, or the rest of the line, could be punished for at.

“Stand up straight,” Sasha whispered to the young man, a boy really.

“Fuck off,” he hissed at her, leaning back slightly and stepping on her toes. Sasha cringed at the surprise pain but she held her stance. It didn’t matter, a sergeant had seen her face wrinkle in discomfort and he descended upon her immediately.

“Are you not enjoying this?” he screamed in her ear. “Are you not? Because you are free to go at any time! Leave now and save us all the trouble of trying to shape a fucking girl into a soldier!” Sasha stood at attention, her eyes focused straight ahead in the hair on the back of the head of the boy in front of her. She took the abuse in stride, soaking it in, absorbing it, letting it imbue her entire body. “That goes for all of you!” the sergeant yelled out, backing away from Sasha and considering the rest of the line. “Leave now and save us all the pain of watching you fail miserably!” The sergeants let them suffer there for a while longer before ordering them to turn to the left and stand shoulder to shoulder, facing the bus they had just vacated. The result of the recruits trying to all turn at the same time was so disastrous, Sasha thought the sergeants were going to have heart attacks they were screaming so loud.

While this was happening, the senior sergeant had gotten off the bus and he watched it pull away, letting the other sergeants continue to scream at the recruits. He walked over to the sergeant and junior sergeant who had been on the bus since the train station and conferred with them over the clipboard. Sasha watched as the junior sergeant said something that she couldn’t hear above all the yelling. He tapped a finger on the clipboard and all three of them suddenly looked over to where she stood at the end of the line. Sasha’s eyes snapped back to the front. The senior sergeant nodded at the sergeant with the clipboard and the junior sergeant before walking away from them to stand facing the line of recruits. “Quiet!” one sergeant yelled at them, unnecessarily.

“You will all listen to the senior sergeant!” the other sergeant shouted, before he and the other stepped back to stand at attention behind their superior. The officer with the scar worked his jaw back and forth as if he were chewing on something, allowing the recruits on the line before him stand in silence, growing more and more uncomfortable as the quiet stretched out before them. Finally, after about twenty minutes by Sasha’s reckoning, he spoke.

“I am Senior Sergeant Ragoza. Welcome to basic combat training,” he stated simply. His voice was at a normal volume, but it sounded like a whisper compared to all the yelling the recruits had just heard. “You brave souls have volunteered to uphold the glory of the Russian Federation, good for you. Indeed, this is honorable, but do not think for one second that your journey through enlistment will be any easier than if you were conscripts.” Sasha heard the breathing of the boy next to her who had stepped on her toes speed up. She would have laughed at his fear if not for the situation. “You will be ground into the dirt until you no longer have a name, until you no longer have a history, until you are simply a soldier ready to die for your country. Succeed or die trying.” Ragoza took one last look at the line of recruits before turning away to face one of the sergeants that stood behind him. “Whip them into shape.” Sasha heard him say before he walked on with the sergeant and junior sergeant to the building behind the line of new recruits. She wanted to turn and see where they were going, but she was interrupted by the yells of the sergeants.

“Here’s where your life begins and ends, shit-heads. Here, on this line! Stand at attention!” The line of recruits shifted as they all tried to stand correctly, knocking into each other and causing the sergeants to scream even louder. “Are you fucking serious? Look at this mess you all are a disgrace! Do it again or we’ll send you to the sand pit!”

For the next two and a half hours, the sergeants ran them through practicing entry-level drills, making them familiar, through blunt repetition, with basic commands. If someone messed up, they would start the sequence all over again. The sergeants were starting to break the recruits in, making them familiar with army conduct and begin to chip away at their identities as civilians to make room for the future soldier. For one thirty minute stretch, the sergeants made them stand in silence, just to see if they could do it without squirming. Sasha ran through the drills with ease, trying not to seem like she was too familiar with them, not wanting to stand out on the first day, not with twelve more weeks in front of her. She would prove herself, but the time wasn’t now.

“Enough!” one sergeant finally yelled. “At ease!” Exhausted, the line of recruits sagged as one, relaxing onto each other, the previous hesitation at touching one another long gone. “Don’t look so fucking tired! We haven’t even started on you faggots!”

The other sergeant shook his head in disappointment but continued to lead them without insult. One of the few times he would do so. “Your in-processing will now commence!” The sergeant yelled at them to march in a line to the building at their rear, following one another in a dejected sort of parade which, according to the sergeants, was shameful and disgusting. They were led to a stark room, lit by dismal fluorescent light bulbs, and were told to sit in the chairs along one wall and wait. The sergeants didn’t leave, instead they stood on either sides of the door they had walked through, as if guarding against anyone wanting to leave.

This part of their in-processing was a tedious experience. The room was as silent as the bus ride had been and Sasha sat for what felt like hours in an uncomfortable plastic chair, the last one in a row against one wall as they had been arranged alphabetically by surname. She watched as the recruits before her were called up one by one to report to the desk at the front of the room and then disappear into the door behind the desk. When it was Sasha’s turn, there was no one left in the room but her and a junior sergeant behind the front desk doing the paperwork for the new recruits. “Zolnerowich?” the junior sergeant called, looking up at her as he spoke.

“Yest'.” She stood, facing him and respectfully responding with a formal “yes sir”. He paused at this before nodding.

“Head through the door to hand over your bag to be processed.” Once through the door in the hallway, Sasha made her way to the desk that she had been directed to and plunked her duffle bag on the counter. The sergeant behind the desk gave her a sharp look before standing with a sigh to look through her bag.

“All inappropriate material will be confiscated from you and kept for the duration of your basic combat training in our secure lockers you see back there,” the sergeant said in a bored, repetitive voice. He had been doing this all day, Sasha thought, watching him unzip her duffle with little enthusiasm. “No personal items are allowed in the barracks,” he said as he picked up her Shakespeare books one by one: _The Tempest_ , _The Merchant of Venice_ , _Twelfth Night_ , and _King Lear_. He tossed them aside without care and the copy of Twelfth Night landed open on its pages, bending them. “You will be assigned your uniform at the clothing depot in one week’s time, until then you may wear your civvies.” He was sifting through her bag, making sure none of her clothes were too flashy or impractical. Sasha had to fight to keep from laughing at his awkwardness when he found her boxes of tampons.

The sergeant finished his job quickly from there, zipping up her duffle and handing the bag back to her along with a pair of combat boots. While the required uniform wasn’t ready to be picked up until the end of the first week, the black, leather boots had been ordered several weeks before and would have to be worn most of the time. “You are in platoon R-836, the female one,” he spat the gendered word out with distaste before turning away from her and shoving her confiscated materials in a bag marked with a number.

Sasha quickly found her way to her barracks through the maze of the training compound wondering if she would be the last of her platoon to arrive in the squad bay. She would find out soon enough, she supposed, her hand on the doorknob, hesitating a moment. When she opened the door to the female bunkhouse Sasha was greeted by the staring eyes of eight other women who had all stopped talking at her entrance. Sasha swallowed and walked forward with her chin held high.

It was a small, but drafty building with a two rows of a few beds creating an aisle down the center. Sasha made her way toward an unclaimed bed at the far end, pushing the rolled mattress from the foot so it unfolded onto the spring frame. She felt movement behind her and turned to see the nervous female recruit from the bus, the one they had called “tits”. Sasha stood awkwardly, holding her posture in a formal stance. Her father had never taught her how to make small talk and she felt completely at a loss in the presence of the young woman.

Thankfully for Sasha, the other woman spoke first. “I just wanted to meet you,” she said with a smile. “I thought you were so nice standing near me at the bus. You seem like you know what you’re doing.” Sasha could see the other recruits, still silent, watching the conversation, waiting to see what kind of person she was. The young woman speaking to her gestured to Sasha’s duffle. “Did they confiscate some of your things too?”

“Yes,” Sasha said, facing the room slightly with a smile, addressing her platoon-mates. “But you should have seen his face when he found my box of tampons.” The room erupted into laughter and Sasha felt the tension in the atmosphere break. The recruits went back to talking amongst themselves and Sasha turned back to the young woman “I’m Sasha,” she said, introducing herself.

The recruit stuck out a hand and Sasha shook it. “Yelena Ponomarenko,” she said, still grinning at the joke about the tampons. Yelena was short, even by Sasha’s standards as she thought everyone was short, but strong. Her light brown hair and light brown eyes gave her a pretty, delicate sort of look, which was contradicted by the harshness of a strong jawline. Another recruit, the other woman from the bus with Yelena and Sasha, approached the two.

“Well that was brutal, wasn’t it?” the newcomer said to Sasha, referencing what had happened on the line. She also held out a hand for Sasha to shake, clasping Sasha’s warmly in her grip when she took it. “Makes me glad we’ll only be training with us girls from now on. I’m Olga Deyneko. What’s your family name? I don’t think I caught it.”

“Of course,” Sasha said, smiling at Olga’s boisterous grin. This woman’s mouth was built for laughter. “It’s Aleksandra Zolnerowich.”

One of Olga’s eyebrows rose at this. “Huh, that’s an appropriate last name. You better make your bed, Alisa, she’s sitting over there, her dad was in the army once and he told her that he would be very surprised if they didn’t do an inspection in the first couple of hours.”

Sasha nodded at a recruit a few beds down with a heart shaped face and small, plump lips. “My father was in the army too,” she admitted, moving to make her bed as was suggested. “He’s been teaching me since I was very little.” Sasha picked up the sheets that had been supplied for her and dressed the mattress quickly, in a tight military style.“When I turned sixteen in February, he gave me the permission form to volunteer as a present. It was my favorite gift he has ever given me.” Sasha didn’t notice Yelena and Olga staring at her until she was finished with her bunk. “He taught me this too…” she trailed off, explaining her bed. She noted how her hospital corners were far neater than the ones on their beds.

Olga was shaking her head. “Forget your daddy, Sasha, I can’t believe you’re sixteen.”

“Why? How old are you?” Sasha asked, feeling defensive.

Yelena sat down on her bed, which was right next to Sasha’s. “I’m twenty, Olga’s twenty-two. You look older because of your hair.” Sasha didn’t know what to say to this so she remained silent. “It isn’t a bad thing!” Yelena rushed to add when she noticed Sasha’s discomfort. “Just don’t see a lot of girls here your age very often, that’s all.”

Sasha shrugged. “I suppose.” They were interrupted from continuing their conversation by the harsh slamming sound of the door to their squad bay being thrown open. A female sergeant strode into the room, eyes sweeping back and forth between the women, who were now standing at attention, and their bunks. Sasha was elated to see a female officer, but the feeling was quickly lost when the sergeant went to each bed, roughly grabbing the sheets and tugging, stripping the mattresses and throwing the bedding on the floor, mixing up the pile with her dirty boots.

“I will count down from four minutes!” the sergeant yelled at them. “If you don’t find your sheets and remake your beds to military standards in that time, this whole platoon will suffer the consequences.”

“Fuck,” Sasha heard Olga swear quietly from her place beside her bunk opposite Sasha’s. For once, Sasha didn’t mind a recruit speaking out of turn as Olga was right. It took over an hour of the sergeant yelling at them and stripping their beds and throwing the sheets on the floor over and over again before they were allowed to go to dinner, which was followed by more screaming and more training exercises on how to properly eat, sit, and dispose of food, all things the recruits seemed to have no grasp of and would need to be taught anew. Crawling into bed that first night, Sasha was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

The first week of training was rough, but it wasn’t much of a challenge for Sasha. She was still holding herself back, observing first and not wanting to stand out. This “Zero Week” was still full of in-processing activities and wouldn’t be heavy on physical training until the next Monday. The worst of it was that the recruits were awake for most of the first week. Between haircuts, sizing for fatigues and boots, thirty second phone calls home, they were shuffled through a series of classrooms where they filled out paperwork for insurance requests and medical histories, all while being tested for drugs. They hardly had any time to relax, let alone sleep. They all quickly learned how to line up, stand at attention in silence for hours, and march in formation. Sasha was grateful that she was with Olga and Yelena through it all or she would have broken ranks and punched a sergeant by now.

“I thought you said your father taught you all of this already,” Yelena asked Sasha one night after she had been voicing her annoyances.

“Well, yes, but this is different.”

Yelena shrugged. “I don’t see how. It’s just obeying one or the other. Except this time, you chose to join the army, you chose to obey these men, right? Your father made you follow him but now you’re doing it for yourself.” Sasha frowned at her friend before turning over in her bunk to angrily fall asleep but by the time she woke the next day, Sasha knew Yelena was right. Even so, it was still hard for Sasha to submit to the demands and the control of the drill instructors.

On their first Sunday in the cafeteria for dinner after church, or after latrine duty in the case of those like Sasha who didn’t have faith, they were all told that in-processing was over. The delighted cheers of the gathered recruits following the announcement. The noise was cut short when they were then told it would only get harder from there on out and the cheers quickly turned to groans. Sasha shifted anxiously in her seat. “What’s wrong with you?” Olga whispered from across the dining table.

“Nothing,” Sasha replied. “I just feel restless that’s all.”

“You will be assigned to your permanent platoons and meet your senior drill instructor and his assistant drill instructors tomorrow morning,” a senior sergeant told them all from his position at the front of the cafeteria. Sasha and the women sitting around her knew this applied to everyone but them; as females they had been quarantined off into their permanent platoons from the start. They would, however, be assigned to different instructors like the rest. Sasha wondered idly who they would have.

“This will not be easy,” the senior sergeant continued. “It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your lives and nothing you have experienced up to this point can possibly prepare you.” Sasha knew this wasn’t exactly true, if basic training was the hardest thing anyone were to ever encounter, there would be no one in the army. The challenge for most people would be the mental games, not the physical tests. Sasha also knew that she had already faced something much more difficult than basic training in her sixteen years living with her father.

The gossip of how young Sasha was had spread fast through the recruits and the officers training them. It wasn’t so much a problem for her, perhaps the drill instructors gave her more pushups than the rest or watched her with more critical of an eye than others, but for the most part, Sasha’s age wasn’t an issue. “Dismissed!” the senior sergeant commanded. The thunderous noise of recruits standing from their tables, chairs scraping back, all at once sounded through the cafeteria as they moved to clear their lunch trays.

“Sasha,” a voice drawled from behind her in the line to hand their plates to the dishwashers. She closed her eyes, trying to summon patience. The voice belonged to the boy who had commented on her hair outside the bus over a week ago. Sasha had since learned his name was Kirill and that he was one of the few who not only had a problem with her age, but with her in general.

“What do you want?” she asked, not yet turning around. She could see Olga in line in front of her shrug up her shoulders with nervous energy.

“Nothing, nothing, just wanted to make sure that you were prepared for this next week, being such a small little child and all.” Sasha couldn’t resist any longer, she turned to face him.

“You’re only two years older than I am. The only real difference between us that matters is that I’m more mature than you by,” she gave him a lasting once-over. “At least five or six years if that, Kiryusha.” Sasha harshly enunciated the diminutive of his name, one traditionally used by a mother doting on her son.

Dark anger flashed over Kirill’s face, but he smiled through it, teeth and lips arranged in a sickly sweet grin. “I just can’t believe at sixteen years old your father gave you permission to join the ground forces…” He shook his head and tutted as if he were concerned. “Did he want you out of the house because he was tired of fucking you?”

Sasha placed her tray on the metal counter and slid it toward the kitchen worker on the other side with a thankful smile. Then she turned back to Kirill, a cold feeling of dangerous calm spreading across her body. “No,” she said evenly. “I grew tired of blowing him so I bit off his dick and he sent me away.” She smiled sexily and moved close to Kirill, stroking his thigh before he had a chance to move away. His mouth was open and his eyes were wide with surprise. “I can do it again if you want?” Sasha offered, leaning in as if she would kiss him, but grabbing his balls at the last second and twisting hard. Kirill howled. His cronies immediately moved to grab Sasha by the shoulders and drag her off their friend.

Tears in his eyes, Kirill strode up to Sasha as best he could with his sore balls, pointing at her with a finger. “Don’t fuck with me, bitch,” he yelled in her face. “You don’t want me as your enemy.”

Sasha grinned. “Oh, I think I do,” she said, and lunged at Kirill’s finger, snapping her teeth down hard on empty air. Kirill had been lucky enough to see this coming and snatched his hand close to his chest.

“She’s insane,” he said, looking around at his friends, nodding for them to let Sasha go. “Fuck her,” he said, spitting on the ground near her feet. They walked off, Kirill limping slightly much to Sasha’s satisfaction.

“What was that?” Yelena asked her when they were clear of the cafeteria. Olga came up behind them and threw an arm around Sasha’s shoulder, shaking her friend gently.

“Who cares? That was fucking awesome, Sasha! Where did you learn to be so badass?” Olga peered down into Sasha’s face which was a bit pale.

“I don’t even know,” Sasha managed to say. “I mean, I do know, but not like that…” she trailed off as Olga and Yelena exchanged looked over their young friend’s head. Abruptly, Sasha stopped walking, pulling up the two other women short. “I didn’t even know I could be sexy!” she shouted, looking every inch her young sixteen years and not sexy at all. Olga and Yelena burst into laughter.

“Yeah, you’re all over that one,” Olga joked, earning a hard, but good-natured shove from Sasha.

“Recruit Zolnerowich!” The address was barked out from behind the three women who all jumped and quickly turning and standing at attention. It was Ragoza, the senior sergeant from the bus their first day, the one with the scar across his face. Sasha had a sinking feeling that he was to be their new drill instructor. It would be just her luck. Her stomach flipped again when she saw Kirill miserably following the senior sergeant in his wake.

“Yes, sir?” she said.

“We do not tolerate women loitering about trying to fraternize with men, do you understand?” The unfairness of the accusation sank deep into her stomach. She knew Ragoza must have seen what had really happened in the cafeteria.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “It will not happen again, sir.”

He nodded once. “You’re right,” he said, looking down at her as best he could: she was almost as tall as he. “It will not. But to make sure, we’re going to the back field to learn a lesson. You’re dismissed,” he said then, addressing Olga and Yelena who saluted and turned to leave, flashing momentarily worried glances at Sasha before they did.

“Holy shit,” Olga whispered to Yelena as they walked away, hand on her chest. “Why is he so frightening?”

“Shush,” Yelena commanded, remaining quiet until they were out of earshot when she spoke again. “I hope Sasha will be okay.”

Olga shrugged. “I feel like she will be. She’s pretty scary herself sometimes.”

“Scary,” Yelena agreed. “But cool.”

Sasha watched her friends leave, thankful that Ragoza hadn’t included them in her punishment by association. She and Kirill followed the officer down to a small patch of grass, near where the bus had dropped them off their first day. It was the second week in the month of September and the nights were cool, the watery sun of the afternoon still lingering in the air but doing nothing by way of giving off heat. Ragoza stopped abruptly and pointed off into the distance. “Run to the fence post.” Kirill and Sasha took off to the far end of the field, running to a marker that they couldn’t see and doubted that it even existed. “What are you doing?” came the loud yell of Ragoza from behind them. “Get the fuck back here!” Sasha and Kirill turned obediently and ran back to the officer who eyed them with disdain as they got closer. “Don’t come back over to me, run! To the fence post go!” Sasha and Kirill turned and ran back across the field only to be called back once again by Ragoza, who kept yelling at them to sprint back and forth over random distances across the grass.

It didn’t take long for Sasha to feel blisters start to form and burst on her feet from rubbing against the harsh leather of the combat boots. Judging by the flashes of pain on Kirill’s face she saw when they turned back to or away from Ragoza, Sasha knew the other recruit was feeling the same blisters on his own feet.

“I don’t know why you’re coming back in my direction, run! I said to the fence post! Run!” Sweat poured from Sasha’s body despite the cooling late afternoon air around her. The perspiration dripped into her eyes as she ran but she didn’t dare take time to wipe it from her vision.

“Turn the fuck around! Why are you running away from me! I said, come back!” Kirill’s breath came heavy and strained from his lungs, the boy holding a stitch in his side as he ran. Sasha soon overtook him and was running in front of him, passing him each time they turned around at the commands.

“Where the fuck are you going? Run to the fence post! Run like you mean it, like your life depends on it!” Kirill was failing fast and Sasha knew it wasn’t just because of the running. The mental strain of this confusing game coupled with the physical exercise was starting to overwhelm the boy. She gritted her teeth, wished him more suffering, and ran faster.

Ragoza watched the two recruits run the sprints in front of him, the punishment clearly working on the boy but not the girl. He frowned in spite of how impressed he was with her. So this was the daughter of the medal winner. Ragoza didn’t know Sasha’s father personally but he knew of him; the Afghan war vet with a Hero of the Soviet Union and a daughter who he had written a letter about, pleading her entrance into the army. Ragoza had read the letter himself, the paper passed around the compound for it’s unusual content. “She is a soldier through and through,” the letter had said. “You will not be sorry to see the training already imparted unto her… A prime, perfect candidate for the Russian army.” No one had truly believed this man ‘s praise of his daughter, for what military man would speak so highly of a girl child? Yet the old veteran’s wish had been granted as would have most reasonable requests put forward by any recipient of the same medal of honor. It had been odd, to be sure, but what could the army do but take on as many soldiers willing to volunteer as they could? Times were rough in the Russian army, and volunteers were rare gems indeed. The general consensus about Aleksandra Zolnerowich had been to watch and wait, and if the girl wasn’t all that her preceding reputation stated, she would be turned away back home.

Ragoza was watching now as Kirill stumbled and Sasha ran past him, the only sign of her suffering the sweat on her body and the twitch of pain upon her lips at each step of her boots. His eyebrows raised. It would be interesting to see what else she could bring to the table, this soldier-girl with the war hero father. She was a puzzle and one that Ragoza wanted to solve.

“You aren’t getting it!” he roared out to the pair after an hour of sprints, more like running now for Sasha and a limping, disgraceful jog for Kirill. “To the wall,” he directed, pointing to the side of a brick building to his right. “Sit in a squat against the wall! Now!” The look in Kirill’s eyes was one Ragoza had seen before: defeat, fear, and loathing. He had been training recruits for a very long time and he knew well how to read the emotions behind the gaze of any soldier-in-training. But in Sasha’s gaze… Ragoza considered the girl he had dubbed “Blondinka” on the bus that first day. Some sort of emotion glittered behind her eyes that he did not like. As he ordered them to continue sitting against the wall in a squat, yelling at them insults and profanity and murderous threats, Ragoza realized that Sasha really had been through this before, that her father’s letter was true; the old man had indeed trained his daughter to be that “prime, perfect candidate for the Russian army”.

Ragoza allowed himself to sympathize with Sasha for a moment, wondering what her life must have been like, trying to imagine how it was to grow up under the roof of someone that had trained her hard enough that basic training looked easy. He noticed the way in which she held her chin, how her eyes were coldly shuttered against the outside world and he clicked his tongue. She was proud, that much was obvious, proud and independent and thoroughly self-sufficient. Ragoza wondered why she even wanted to join the army, why she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps.

“Do we now understand why there is no fighting allowed in the cafeteria?” he yelled at the pair who could only nod their agreement. “What was that?” he yelled louder.

“Yes, sir!” came the reply, the stronger of the two voices belonging to Sasha. Ragoza walked closer to her, frowning as he realized just how strong she was, much stronger than he had first recognized. Sweat poured from her body and her eyes were dark with fatigue, but her breath was steady and her expression was relaxed: this physical exercise wasn’t very hard for her. Hidden in the tall build of her body was the heavy musculature of a trained athlete and the energy of youth and the fire of something to prove.

It had to be that she joined the army of her own volition, even with her father being who he was. Her need to prove herself wouldn’t be etched in every corner of her body if she hadn’t wanted to volunteer. Still, that fierce pride remained in her eyes. Ragoza rubbed his chin, absentmindedly letting his fingers trail over to his scar and massage the twisted tissue that pained him from time to time. That would not do, he told himself as he dropped his hand from his face and adjusted the sleeves on his uniform fatigue jacket. Just because one is good at something doesn’t mean they deserve it without any hint of a challenge. And if it’s a challenge she wants, Ragoza thought. A challenge she’ll get.

He checked his watch. Kirill and Sasha had been squatting against the wall for about forty minutes. Ragoza tried not to snort at the ashen color of Kirill’s face. “You may go, Blondinka. I will see you tomorrow morning and it better be without that fucking attitude or I will wipe it from your goddamn face.” He had spoken to Sasha but was keeping his eyes on the boy who had started to move away from the wall in hope at the sound of Ragoza’s voice.

Sasha stood up, legs wobbling slightly as she adjusted her balance from being held in one position for so long. “Yes, sir,” she said, saluting. “Thank you, sir.” Ragoza had already turned his back on her, marching over to Kirill who was resting the back of his head on the brick wall.

“Eyes front, recruit!” Ragoza yelled, jerking Kirill out of his rest. “I see you want more training! We’ll be out here all night if you wish!” The shouts of Ragoza punishing Kirill followed Sasha all the way back to her squad bay. She pushed her short hair away from her sweaty forehead as she opened the door to the barracks. Ragoza’s odd tone frustrated and confused her.

“You’re alive!” Olga said from across the aisle, watching Sasha plunk herself wearily down the side of her bed.

Sasha nodded, staring off into space as she slowly undid the laces of her boots before shucking the leather shoes. “Yeah,” she said, still staring off into space. “I suppose I am.”

Sheets rustled as Yelena rolled over on her bed and sat up, looking at her friend. “What happened? Did he take you to the pits? Sasha?”

“What?” Sasha asked, blinking and bringing her eyes back into focus. “What did you say?”

“The pits. Where did he take you and Kirill?” Yelena repeated, pulling a worried face at Olga as the two girls watched Sasha gingerly peel off her socks, revealing raw skin with many blisters.

“Just on the grass. He had us run sprints and then we sat in a squat against the wall of the front building.” She threw the socks on the floor and proceeded to massage her feet. “He was acting strange.”

Olga scooted forward on her bed so she was closer to Sasha and Yelena. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Sasha said hesitantly, her mind churning. “I think he believes I have been holding back.”

Olga gave a short laugh. “Have you?” Sasha looked at the other woman, honestly considering the question. Olga’s smile faded when met with Sasha’s serious gaze.

“I think perhaps I am, or rather, I was. But why didn’t he just say so? My father would tell me all the time when I needed to pick up the slack.” Sasha continued to work at her feet, stretching the muscles as she mused over the problem.

“It’s the army, kid. No one is here to hold your hand.” The recruit who had spoken, interjecting into the conversation, was Alisa, the only other woman in the squad bay with a father who had been in the army apart from Sasha. She originally had been pleasant enough, but as the weeks went on in basic training the platoon discovered the harder she had to work, the nastier she got.

Sasha frowned. “Yes, thank you, Alisa, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Alisa huffed a sigh of disbelief.

“I know more than you think, Shura,” the stubborn recruit said condescendingly. “You’re not the only girl whose daddy was in the military.”

Sasha bristled at Alisa’s use of a familiar diminutive of her name but Olga spoke up before she could answer, try to smooth things over. “I’m sure what Sasha means is that she’s confused. Right? She just wants to do well like the rest of us.”

Sasha nodded, turning back to Olga completely and trying to shut Alisa out of the conversation. “It was like he’s waiting for me to do something, to really show him what I’m made of. But if I do that I’m worried people will get hurt.”

Alisa snorted. “Now that I don’t believe.”

“You better,” Sasha said, her cheeks flushing red with anger. “I could knock you clear across the room right now if you keep going this way.” Alisa crossed her arms.

“Prove it.”

Sasha stood up, meeting the challenge. “I don’t have to prove anything to you!” she yelled, staring to walk across the room to approach Alisa who had gotten up from her own bed and was walking toward Sasha. In a tangle of blankets, Yelena quickly stood up to put a hand on Sasha shoulder, holding her back. Sasha stopped moving but she jutted out her chin, still daring Alisa. “I’ll be your sparring partner any day, then we’ll see what you think.” Alisa waved a dismissive hand at Sasha, turning away from the fight and retreating back to her bunk. “Don’t believe me?” Sasha yelled, her voice getting louder as her exhaustion and frustrations from the day caught up to her. “Try me when we learn to fight!”

Yelena pushed back slightly on Sasha’s shoulder, speaking softly into her friend’s ear. “That’s enough, Sasha. Come on, let’s go to bed.” Tired to the point of compliance, Sasha allowed herself to be led away from the confrontation.

Wanting to exceed everyone’s expectations and spurred on by Ragoza and Alisa, Sasha let herself go that next day. She ran the fastest, she completed more exercises in the given time, and excelled at any and all questions put to her. Sasha felt as if she had been underwater this whole time, holding herself back until now when she was finally able to shake out her body and be free. Even if it was a huge change for Sasha, not everyone immediately noticed. Her physical aptitude she got away with, the instructors chalking it up to her youth and exuberance. Even when they introduced weapons training in the third week, her instructors hesitated only a moment when they saw her aptitude with the guns, rationalizing her skills with who her father was.

They did start to notice her in the third week, but it was only her attitude that caught the eye of her superiors. They noticed and they didn’t let her get away with any of it. When she did her best they told her to mind her place, to listen to the instructors even if she knew the material better than they. When she held herself back, they taunted her, asking her why she wasn’t doing better, why she wasn’t excelling. The confusion was maddening for Sasha.

“You think you’re so good?” a drill instructor asked her one day during rifle training. She had just assembled her semi-automatic faster than the other women in her platoon and the sergeants caught her lounging a bit as she waited for them all to catch up. “If you’re so good, let’s see if you can hold two little cotton balls in your hand, let’s see if you can do that!” The DI produced two fluffy cotton swabs and grabbed Sasha’s left hand, wrenching it open and making her hold it out flat, palm facing down. The challenge was she had to keep them balanced on the back of her hand for five minutes and if she dropped them, her platoon-mates had to hold their rifles straight out in front of their chest until she could keep the cotton balls on her hand for the full five minutes. Everyone in her platoon but Olga and Yelena ignored her for a week after that.

Always Ragoza was there, watching her train or yelling at her when she was in line standing at attention. He knew that Sasha was good, better than good, but if she really wanted to be a soldier, she would have to learn army discipline, to bend to the will of her superiors. Since the night he had punished her with Kirill, Ragoza had observed Sasha closely, starting to understand just how tough her father had been. “It’s only natural that she wishes now to rebel against authority,” Ragoza told the other sergeants once while they were playing cards off-duty.

“But Garik, she’s confusing the army with her father. While this may be understandable, it has no place in the military,” another senior sergeant answered, using Ragoza’s first name. Several other officers nodded. Ragoza peered at them through the haze of smoke over the card table and shrugged his shoulders slightly in agreement.

“Can we even afford to coddle such behavior in our training, Ragoza?” a short, ruddy-faced sergeant asked, drawing a card from the dealer. “Especially from a girl. She’s weak enough as it is, why waste any more time on a female when we have plenty of strong young men around?”

Ragoza barked a laugh. “Anton, in what world is the Russian army currently suffering an overabundance of young men?” The man called Anton grumbled, whether it was directed at Ragoza or the card he had just drawn, no one was sure. “I agree with all of you, of course,” Ragoza continued. “Obeying is much different than being obedient.” The gathered officers nodded wisely at the statement. “That is why I persist.”

“She better be worth all this extra effort, Garik,” the senior sergeant who had spoken first said. “Anton is right, I would hate to see you waste all your time on a woman.” Ragoza shrugged.

“Out of deference to her father, I will pursue this as long as I deem the benefits still outweighing the risk.”

The senior sergeant upped the bet. “Ah yes, the war hero. Doesn’t the colonel favor him? Perhaps you are right to do this.”

“We shall see,” Ragoza said, showing his cards to the group and winning the hand.

For whatever reason, and it was much misunderstood amongst most of the officers, Ragoza made good on his promise with Sasha. He began to seek her out especially, heaping punishment upon her, waiting until when she would finally see that he wasn’t trying to break her will, just her allegiance.

He would charge into her classroom during the afternoon lectures, taking her out of whatever lesson she was being taught and dragging her to the sand pits, watching with crossed arms as two other DIs screamed at her, directing her in high-speed calisthenics. The pits were man made areas of dug sand that had been heaped into large piles on the outskirts of one side of the training complex and were used as punishment. Sasha would run through the exercises as best she could with her booted feet bogged down by the sand, following the instructions of the DIs until she simply wore out, slumping to the ground in exhaustion.

Of course, Ragoza didn’t need to just use the sand pit to try and get his point across. When he discovered Sasha did not attend church on Sundays, but instead participated in the mandatory cleaning duties of those who didn’t go to worship, he stayed behind as well. From the latrines to the squad bay floors, he would find her each week and make her mop the concrete floors with a single wet towel, demanding that she push it back and forth as fast as she could in a practice known as “scuzzing”. Once, Sasha had to scuzz the floor of the cafeteria twenty times in front of the recruits on cleaning duty with her, with Ragoza counting down. When she failed to make the length of the floor within forty seconds, all the recruits had to scuzz with her, starting over again and again each time she failed. When Ragoza decided she had had enough, the recruits on cleaning duty had scuzzed the floors ten times because of Sasha, swearing at her and throwing the dirty towels on her head as they left. Sasha watched them go from her position sitting on the floor, too tired to protest the abuse, her knees oozing blood through the worn holes in her trousers. After that Sunday, the number of recruits attending church soared.

It didn’t matter if she succeeded or was impertinent or even just blinked. No DI ever needed an excuse to punish a recruit and the same went for Ragoza and Sasha. It soon became common in Sasha’s platoon to hear such conversations starting with someone asking where Sasha was, to only get the response of “getting ‘pitted’ again” or “she’s with Ragoza”. Sasha began to wonder how much more of this she could stand.

“What choice do I have?” she told Yelena one night after lights out, whispering to her friend through the dark.

“You could leave,” Yelena whispered back. Sasha snorted.

“Leave dishonored and shamed and go back, tail between my legs, to whom? My father? I refuse.”

Yelena rolled over to peer at Sasha in the dim light of the moon barely shining in the window. “Then surely you will work yourself to death! This can’t be fair, Sasha, even you must see that.” Yelena could see the outline of Sasha’s shoulders moving up in a shrug.

“Then I will die. I would rather that fate than to see my father again.” Sasha’s power to endure was nothing short of astounding. Yelena shook her head at the crazy, young recruit in the bed next to her and went to sleep.

As the fifth week drew closer, the week when they would introduce advanced combat training, Sasha became agitated. She remembered her promise to Alisa and was regretting it with each day. She had hoped that the other recruit would have forgotten, but the day before Alisa had bumped into her shoulder as Sasha was walking out of the bathroom. “Better watch it, bitch,” the woman told Sasha in a bitter voice. Sasha hadn’t slept at all that night, dreading when she would do harm to the the recruit.

Sasha and her platoon were introduced to hand-to-hand combat by way of traditional Russian martial arts, beginning with Sambo. Miserably, Sasha dragged her feet as they headed to the training grounds for their first lesson. “Get on the line, Blondinka!” Ragoza roared at her when he saw her fidgeting. “What is your problem today? Are you too scared to fight?”

“No, sir,” she answered in a voice that sounded like she was.

“Disgusting,” Ragoza muttered, leaving off his verbal abuse for the Sambo instructor to begin. As the lesson progressed, Sasha became more and more unsettled. Ragoza had never seen her act this way before and he became angrier as Sasha’s nervousness grew. What was her problem? The instructor had finished with his introductory lesson and was leading the recruits through basic exercises. Sasha ran through the drill like the other recruits, although her movements were jerky, her muscles twitching when she tired to hold them steady. The instructor clapped his hands, returning the recruits to the line where the DIs yelled at them to stand at attention, Sasha following the command a beat after the rest. Ragoza had enough.

“Blondinka, come here!” Sasha jumped, startled by the address, and rushed to obey. “You are fucking disgraceful! If you’re so scared now, what makes you think you can cut it after training?” Sasha clenched her jaw at this, staring straight ahead. Ragoza got right in her face. “If you’re as good as you think you are, prove it now!” He turned to the line. “This disgraceful recruit needs a sparring partner. Who volunteers!”

Alisa took one step strong step forward. “Sir, I will fight her!” the recruit called out. Sasha stiffened and Ragoza noticed. He grabbed Sasha roughly by the shoulder and shoved her in front of the Sambo instructor who grinned. “Nice hair,” the instructor said. Sasha rolled her eyes. The instructor stood aside as Alisa took her place next to Sasha, a faint smile on her lips.

“Set!” Ragoza yelled out.

“I bet you’re wishing that your father taught you some Sambo like mine did.” Alisa hissed at Sasha as the two prepared to spar. “At least mine really loved me. I heard your papa turned you over to the army as soon as he could.”

“Begin!”

Sasha darted in close to Alisa, throwing two quick punches to her left and right ear before grabbing her collarbone and holding her out as she used her head to ram into Alisa’s sternum. As she gasped for breath, Sasha head-butted her again in the chin, forcing Alisa to fall on her backside. Once she hit the ground, Sasha jumped up slightly so her legs could wrap around Alisa’s neck, her ankles crossing behind the other woman’s head and holding her in the lock securely. Sasha’s weight landed on Alisa’s lap hard, causing her to howl with pain as Sasha sat on her, Sasha arching her back so her hands could reach up and grab Alisa’s ankles. She struggled, but Sasha had her completely under her control.

“Release her!” Ragoza barked out once he had recovered from the shock of seeing Sasha fight. Sasha squeezed her thighs together once more before letting go and rolling quickly onto her side to get to her feet. Alisa stayed on the ground, groaning. Breathless, Sasha brushed her short hair out of her eyes and stood at attention, waiting for the reprimand. The senior sergeant walked over to Alisa and sniffed. “Get up, recruit.” Sasha allowed herself to raise an eyebrow, watching as Alisa struggled to her feet, limping as she returned to the line. Ragoza rounded on Sasha. “Get the fuck back in that line and try to learn some humility!” Sasha hurried back to the line, seeing her platoon-mates all lean forward slightly as they tried to stare at her.

After that day, Ragoza made Sasha stand on the line, remaining still and silent, as the rest of her platoon learned hand-to-hand combat. “You already know so much,” the senior sergeant taunted her. “Just relax and watch, you’ve earned it after all, haven’t you?” Sasha’s cheeks would burn with shame. She hadn’t done anything wrong, yet somehow, she had. “That’s right. Just stand there, Blondinka, you deserve a break.”

This torturous game of having to stand by, watching as her friends got to practice hand-to-hand combat, went on for weeks. Ragoza let her participate in every other activity but the sparring sessions. Sasha was grateful that he at least let her learn how to handle weapons, taking very much to the sniper rifle her father hadn’t had time to teach her. “Oh, so we find something of which you are not a proficient! Praise the Lord!” Sasha gritted her teeth, reloading the chamber of the sniper as she tried to hit the target on the hillside. She wasn’t very good at it, but she enjoyed the feeling of the powerful weapon in her hands. She told herself that this wasn’t that bad, that she was still learning military tactics and other weaponry while remaining in fighting shape. Even if Ragoza never let her spar again, Sasha told herself that she would be perfectly happy about it, that she would have to be, until her graduation.

During her seventh week, a Systema assistant instructor came up to her while Ragoza’s back was turned, smiling at her as she stood off to the side, as per usual. “You don’t look like such a hot shot to me,” he said, bending down to speak into her ear. “I know I could take you, easily. Come on then, turn and fight me.” It was a direct command from a superior officer and Sasha could do nothing but obey.

Just as they set to fight, Ragoza turned and shouted at the assistant instructor to call off the fight but it was too late. The man lunged at Sasha’s neck and she reacted instinctively, twisting around him, grabbing his wrist, and jerking his elbow the wrong way with such force, everyone who was gathered in the training room could hear the pop and crunch of bone. He was helped away to medical, swearing and cursing her name. Sasha looked into the eyes of the senior sergeant as he ordered her back to stand in the line she suddenly knew why Ragoza was doing what he was. It wasn’t about her at all, it was about the safety of the other recruits.

Whispers began to follow Sasha around the camp. She could feel the pressure of prying eyes watching her every move and she tried not to let it bother her. But the whispers soon began to build, becoming harsh gossip, and then finally jeering calls from across the cafeteria or the training grounds. “I heard you think you’re better than us, bitch!” came the taunts. “You come visit me at night and I’ll teach you how to be a woman again!” No one had yet tried to touch her or issue a direct challenge, but Sasha knew it was only a matter of time.

They found her on a Sunday, during her latrine duty at the start of the ninth week. Kirill and four other recruits cornered her as she was coming out of the bathroom, still carrying cleaning supplies. Kirill and his mates laughed loudly together when they saw her, catcalling and circling her, trying to grab her chest, her butt, her hair. “You’re such a bitch, Sasha,” Kirill told her, standing in front of her stopping her progress and commanding the other recruits to back away for a moment. “Well?” he asked.

Sasha glared up at him. “Just because I can beat you in combat doesn’t make me a bitch.”

The corners of Kirill’s mouth pulled downward, making him look like an affronted fish. “That is not… Fine! Let’s go, right here, right now!” Kirill backed away from Sasha, pulling up his hands in front of his face.

“You look like an idiot,” she told him.

“Are you too afraid to fight me?”

Sasha groaned. “No, I’m not! I just don’t feel like putting all of you in the med bay right now.”

Kirill scoffed, looking at his friends. “Probably on her…” he never finished the sentence.

Forty five minutes later, Sasha found herself standing in front of the office door of a colonel she had never met, told to wait outside by Ragoza until she was summoned. She could hear the men inside the room, their words muffled through the walls until she moved to place her ear on the door. A voice, not Ragoza’s, came to Sasha’s ears first. “In fact, over the course of her, what is it now, almost nine weeks? She has humiliated my instructors, breezed through your classes and combat exercises, and put several others in the medical wing with moderate to severe injuries! For goodness sake Garik, I haven’t even had one complaint out of the female platoon about harassment!. None of the men dare try anything because of her. It’s unheard of!”

“Sir,” Ragoza said then, his voice slightly muffled. “She is a perfect candidate. I just thank God she even wanted to join the army, that she actually wants to fight. We’d be idiots not to use her.” Sasha swallowed, uncertain of how to take the praise from the senior sergeant. She was glad he would never say such words to her face, she didn’t know if she could handle it.

Sasha heard the colonel sigh. “But you are right I suppose, Garik; we’d be a fools to waste her. Potential assets such as her are worth our investments.” Sasha heard the colonel sigh again. “Send her in.” She straightened from the door immediately, jumping to stand away from it at attention in the hall as she should have been doing the whole time.

Finally, the door opened to Ragoza who nodded at Sasha to enter, shutting the door behind her when she did. There was a large oak desk at the front of the room behind which was seated a scrawny man, tall and thin with wiry muscles roping his body; Sasha could see them shift under his uniform. She knew that she would have a hard time besting him in unarmed combat, even if he was a older. This man knew his way around a fight. Sasha stood at attention before his desk until nodded, allowed her to stand at ease.

“Do you know why you are here, Aleksandra Zolnerowich?” the man asked.

“No, sir.”

The colonel raised his brows. “You don’t?” Sasha’s eyes darted to Ragoza and the colonel noticed. “Don’t look at him, look at me. I’m the one who is speaking to you and you will address me only.” Sasha straightened her gaze and her shoulders as a mark of obedience to his statement. “Good. Now, do you know why you are here?”

“Sir, because of this recruit’s knowledge and skill in hand-to-hand combat?” The colonel nodded once, wanting her to continue. “And because of the fighting, sir.” She spoke it as a statement. The colonel looked at her for a long time.

“What drives you, recruit?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.

“Sir?”

He waved a hand across his desk, gesturing generally to the whole of the situation. “What made you want to join the Russian army?”

Sasha frowned. “This recruit’s father, sir. He was…”

“Yes,” the colonel interrupted. “I know your father.” Her eyes flicked over to the nameplate on his desk. Colonel Boris Ulyashin, the name didn’t sound familiar to her. If her father did know him, he was never spoken of to her. “No, he wouldn’t have told you about me. I was just a newly made lieutenant when I fought with him in Afghanistan. We weren’t in the same unit but what I saw him do…” Sasha tried not to lean in. This was one war story her father had never told her: the story of why he was awarded his medal of honor. The colonel looked up and pointed a finger at Sasha. “He saved his entire unit from being overrun, I’ve never seen such selfless bravery or such strength under fire. He killed thirty eight of those Afghani bastards, single handedly holding the line for two hours. That’s a lot to live up to."

“Yes, sir,” Sasha immediately replied.

Colonel Ulyashin cleared his throat. “I suppose that is why you decided to volunteer, to make him proud?”

“Yes, sir.”

Colonel Ulyashin rubbed his chin. “What happened to him anyway?”

“He grew old,” Sasha said. “Sir,” she quickly added. The colonel disregarded her cheek and gave a small chuckle.

“Don’t we all,” he said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. “Don’t we all. Someday you will too if we don’t get you killed first.”

Sasha took a chance. “Sir, that would be an honor.”

He fixed her with a sharp look. “Would it?” Sasha nodded, heart beating wildly in her chest. “Interesting,” he said, trailing off into thought. Colonel Ulyashin sat up in his chair and looked at Sasha with a shrewd air. “Are you on birth control?”

She was surprised by the question, but answered obediently. “No, sir.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you sexually active?”

Sasha shook her head. “This recruit is sixteen, sir.”

“Answer the question.”

Sasha clenched her teeth. “No, sir,” she said precisely. The colonel looked at her for a long time.

“You’re not afraid of me are you?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.

Sasha frowned, caught off guard again. “Sir?” she asked.

Colonel Ulyashin ignored her confusion. “It seems that you are not much afraid of anything, are you?” Sasha remained silent, unsure of what was happening. Colonel Ulyashin looked away from her then, marking something down on a paper on his desk. “I am recommending your immediate admittance to receive your instructor credentials as a warrant officer at the St. Petersburg Military Institute.”

“S-sir?” Sasha stammered but the colonel interrupted her.

“Do not pretend to be humbled, girl, it does not become you. We know you would be wasted on assignment to some supply unit and you know it too. You came into this camp waiting for your moment, for this moment, so spare us the playacting.” Sasha swallowed hard, setting her jaw against the colonel’s words. “You will have to be put on probation there until your eighteenth birthday which should allow you enough time to shed that little attitude of yours.” He said this pointing the butt of a large pen in her direction before returning to the task of scribbling out a signature at the bottom of another sheet of paper. “You will be promoted to junior sergeant upon your graduation and will report to the institute on the seventh of January.” The colonel stood, pushing back from his desk and tugging at the shirt hem of his fatigues. “Would you have been born a boy then you really would go places.” He nodded at the door. “Enjoy the last three weeks before your graduation, recruit. Try not to maim anyone else in your time here. You are dismissed.”

Sasha clicked her heels and left the office at a sharp march. Her body was following the motions easily but her mind was far away, distantly trying to process what had just happened. She could hardly describe it to the rest of her platoon when she arrived back to the squad bay. They couldn’t believe it either, not until Sasha showed them the paper summons that was delivered to her the next day through the PX. Laying in her bed that next night, clutching the papers close to her chest, Sasha let herself imagine what it would be like for her in the coming years. This wasn’t how she expected to rise in the ranks through the military, but it certainly was going to get her to her goal much faster than the route she had thought would be hers. In the end, it didn’t really matter, as long as she ended up where she wanted.

“I have no doubt that you will make your father proud.” The words of Colonel Ulyashin rang in her ears. Sasha clutched the paper tighter to her chest.

“That I will make myself proud,” she said out loud, speaking quietly into the dark as to not wake anyone in the squad bay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: Thank you to rammy-sky on fanfiction.net for giving me some little corrections to my terrible Russian!
> 
> Tak-tochno - Так точно
> 
> Nikak-nyet - Никак нет
> 
> dukhi - духи (plural, with emphasis on first part), дух (singular) The slang meaning is fresh meat or rookie soldier. Sometimes you can find another slang military meaning for this word - Mujahideen (моджахед, душман = дух) during Afghan war. And you right, this word also meant "spirit" (plural, with emphasis on first part) and "perfume" (with emphasis on second part).
> 
> Thank you rammy-sky!
> 
> END EDIT
> 
> Through my research, and this isn't exact mind you, I found that the proper, formal response to any question or command given by an officer or an NCO to a soldier in the Russian army is as follows:
> 
> Yes: Tak-tochno - Exactly so - Так-точно
> 
> No: Nikak-nyet - Not at all - Никак-ныет
> 
> And then you have to add a salutation, using Tovarishch - Comrade - Товарищ, and rank. For example, if a sergeant was to ask a soldier a question that has an answer in the negative, the correct response would be: "Nikak-nyet Tovarishch Serzhant".
> 
> However, this is really long and drawn out and would clutter up my writing and make you all confused (but not really because I know you guys are smart) so I decided to leave it out. In general, I elected to leave out most little tidbits of Russian because 1) they are technically speaking in Russian so it really wouldn't make sense to have Russian words pop up every now and then because all the words are Russian! and 2) I don't know Russian so I don't want to assume or mess up anything. That being said, I have clearly included some stuff I found to be interesting to me or essential to the story in terms of placing extra emphasis upon the words. So, if you are interested, the nicknames Senior Sergeant Rogza uses are written out as follows:
> 
> sis'ki - tits - сиськи
> 
> zadnitsa - ass - задница
> 
> blondinka - blondie - блондинка
> 
> Other words:
> 
> dukhi - ghost - Cyrillic unknown (I found that this is colloquial slang to pejoratively address conscript soldiers of the Russian army. The Cyrillic is unknown because it kept translating to like "spirit" or "perfume" but I know that this is what they call conscripts from an article on Vice. But, who knows? They could be wrong as well)
> 
> Smirnah - attention - Смирно
> 
> Yest' - yes sir - Есть (proper term for replying to a superior officer when they call your name. Literally means "there is")
> 
> This research is from the Internet and it's not my full-time job so if I'm wrong on anything, please let me know!


End file.
